


The Prince and the Pease

by luulapants



Series: The Prince and the Pease [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Bedwarmer Stiles, Canonical Character Death, Espionage, Excessive use of Middle English poetry, M/M, Minor Character Death, Nobility, POV Peter Hale, Prince Peter Hale, Puns & Word Play, Royal Hales, Sharing a Bed, Smut, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:33:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 43,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23997583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luulapants/pseuds/luulapants
Summary: The former Prince Peter is forced to renounce his succession to the Hale throne as part of treaty negotiations between his father and King Deucalion. As a "guest" (hostage) of Deucalion, he is surrounded by court gossip and politics. His only ally is his advisor, Deaton - that is, until the king sends a bedwarmer named Stiles to keep him company. Is he an ally or a source of yet more treachery?
Relationships: Alan Deaton & Peter Hale, Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Series: The Prince and the Pease [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1919389
Comments: 257
Kudos: 513





	1. The Bedwarmer

The wet ocean winds off the coast swept into the halls of Eastfall Castle and held there in a thick, chill cloak of humidity that pebbled on the stone walls. Even the tapestries looked to hang heavier with wet. Everywhere he went, Peter felt dogged by dampness, as if it were another of King Deucalion’s servants, sent to shadow him, to watch.

His one gift of privacy in his new accommodations came at the cost of quite a bit of legwork: his living quarters high in a tower on the north end of the castle, above the apothecary and far from most other residences. Peter suspected this placement meant to impede spying on his own part more than to grant him solitude.

The seemingly endless damp stairs opened to his solar, a long room which curved between the outer wall of the tower and the inner stairway. The king, of course, had seen to Peter’s comfort with fine furnishings: a dining area by the south windows, a sitting area by the fireplace. The fire was already stoked and glowing softly when he entered, its heat wafting up the flue to the bedchambers above. The windows were tinted in shades of yellow and red. During the day, colored sunlight streamed through them and caught in the particles of moisture in the room so that the very air seemed aflame. On the far end of the solar, wooden stairs ascended to his bedchamber, the only entrance to the room.

Peter stopped short as he entered his bed chambers. A man stood crouched over his desk, his back to the doorway, shifting through papers at an unhurried pace.

“You’ll find nothing of value there,” he advised.

The man ceased his snooping, but rather than a jolt at having been found out, he turned with an easy, unconcerned confidence that had Peter straightening his posture, ready for defense. The stranger was little more than a boy, thin-built with hair shorn close to the scalp. He wore a simple knee-length tunic and brown stockings beneath, no shoes.

“Should I call for the guards?” Peter asked.

“I wouldn’t recommend it, my lord,” the boy answered, folding his arms behind his back. “You’ve only just arrived at Eastfall, after all. It would be a great amusement for you to call the guards on your own bedwarmer. Best to keep off the jester’s tongue for a few days at least.”

Peter looked the boy over skeptically. He was attractive, to be sure. Clear, pale skin with a smattering of moles and a sharply cut jaw. There was something of an assessment in his gaze, perhaps too aware for a servant. “A bedwarmer,” he repeated. “I requested no such service.”

The boy strode over to Peter’s bed and sat on the end of it, perfectly at ease with his hands splayed behind himself. “No request was needed. The king’s daughter is of age and quite beautiful. He welcomes a new man into his household cautiously and needing assurance that your urges can sate elsewhere.”

Ah. That did make a bit of sense. He closed the door to his chambers, then turned to look upon the boy again. “What’s your name?” Peter asked.

“Stiles, my lord.”

“An uncommon name.”

“I beg to disagree, my lord. I think you’ll find it a more common name than Peter.”

“Peter is common enough.”

“Common among nobles, my lord,” Stiles answered, “which, by definition, should make it an uncommon name.”

“You’re making a joke at my expense, I think.”

“Apologies, my lord,” Stiles replied, not looking the least bit sorry. “If you forgive the play of word, I think you’ll find truth in it. For if one considers the number of nobles and the number of commoners, one finds that a common _er_ name, however uncommon, is, in fact, commoner than a noble name, however common.”

“If you’re trying to give me a headache, it won’t work,” Peter told him with a smile. He decided he liked this Stiles boy. He walked to the washbasin beside his wardrobe and dipped a cloth into it, beginning to wipe the day’s grime from his face. “And anyway, there is a flaw in your logic. Commoners frequently name their children after nobles. There must be common Peters, then.”

“Not since your father, my lord.”

Peter’s hand stilled, cloth pressed to his cheek. “And why would you say that?”

“Commoners frequently name their children after nobles whom they admire, my lord.”

Peter shot the boy a warning look over his shoulder. “Your tongue is sharp for a servant. Too sharp, some might say.”

“Ah, yes, my lord,” Stiles sighed. “I should be cautious lest I be dealt a punishment. Perhaps to be lent out to a strange nobleman to serve as a bedwarmer.” He batted his eyelashes in a mockery of seduction.

Peter finished wiping up. “If King Deucalion is so cautious of his daughter’s virtue, he might take more care in choosing his bedwarmers,” he observed. “Choosing ones that have interest in men, for instance.” He dropped the cloth into the basin.

“Oh, I have, my lord,” Stiles assured him.

“Have what?”

“Interest in men, my lord.”

Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. He might get that headache after all. “Then why, pray tell, do you see fit to make such a protest of your current occupation? You have interest in men. I am young and, dare I say, not unattractive.” He turned and held his arms wide that Stiles might assess his appeal.

“Not unattractive at all, my lord,” Stiles agreed.

“Then what about me do you find distasteful, Stiles?”

Stiles smiled at him. “The name, for a start.”

A knock at the door saved Peter the trouble of a retort. “Come in,” he called.

Deaton stepped into the room, head ducked in a bow. “My lord, will you be needing -” He stopped short as he lifted his head and saw Stiles sitting on the bed. He raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Peter. Deaton could not be so openly insolent as to ask what the hell a strange boy was doing in his bed, but the question posed clearly on his face regardless.

“A bedwarmer,” Peter explained. “Courtesy of our host.”

“Ah.” While Deaton’s expression remained inscrutable to many, Peter had known him nearly all their lives. He could see the mental calculations taking place in his head, the complications that this presented. During treaty negotiations, when it had been decided that Peter should be made a _guest_ of King Deucalion (a hostage, in plainer terms), the intent had been that he should go alone, without ally, into the arms of their former enemy. Peter had been able to plead for himself but one comfort: his loyal manservant, Deaton.

Unbeknownst to King Deucalion, Deaton had become far more in his years of service to the crown. He had apprenticed with their court physician for a time, possessed a gift for espionage and subterfuge, and had been well on his way to an advisorship, should Peter take the crown.

That he should keep up appearances as a simple manservant was necessary, but had not been intended as his primary vocation in this venture. A bedwarmer, ever-present in his chambers, would diminish what little privacy the two of them had for scheming.

“Stiles is here that I should keep my desires from straying to Princess Jennifer,” Peter added. “Stiles, this is Deaton.”

If Stiles thought it strange that he offered the information to a servant so readily, he didn’t say it. He got to his feet and made a half-bow toward Deaton. “You must be the servant Prince Peter brought with him from The Hills.”

Deaton reciprocated the bow and carefully replied, “ _Lord_ Peter.” Peter, realizing it a bit unusual for him to watch the interactions of servants with such interest, turned to his wardrobe and busied himself with dressing for bed while he listened. “My lord has renounced his succession to the throne,” Deaton explained, though surely Stiles knew. If, indeed, he was some sort of spy for King Deucalion, the “slip” was no doubt a test.

“My mistake. Of course, you’re right. The widow Princess Talia is to take his place in succession.”

“Alongside her betrothed, the Prince Ennis,” Deaton agreed. Then, a bit louder, “My lord, your bedwarmer is quite well-versed in court politics.”

Peter, behind his dressing screen, had stripped his shirts and had the laces of his breeches most of the way undone. He could see the two of them over the top of the screen. “Indeed.”

With a quiver of amusement in his cheek, Deaton noted, “Perhaps King Deucalion has some sense of your tastes after all.”

“With so much information about succession lines in his head, I should hope he knows _his_ place,” Peter ventured, hoping to entice that sharp tongue to action for Deaton’s observation. Stiles didn’t disappoint.

With a bright smile, Stiles replied, “My lord, I think you’ll find court politics is quite instructional in the working of pillicocks.”

Deaton barked a laugh and gave Peter a look that clearly said, _This is your problem_. “Will you be needing anything else tonight, my lord?” he asked.

Now in his nightshirt, Peter stepped out from behind the screen. “That will be all, Deaton. I’ll want you to rouse me early tomorrow.”

“Of course.” Deaton bowed his head, then took his leave, closing the door behind him.

That left him alone with the new meddler, who stood at the foot of his bed in a tall but casual posture, his head tipped to the side in a play at submission. “And will my lord be needing anything from me tonight?” he asked in a tone which managed both seduction and satire in one.

Peter wouldn’t lie to himself and say he wasn’t tempted, but Stiles had made it abundantly clear that his new occupation was compulsory. For all his faults, Peter wasn’t in the habit of bedding those not eager for the experience. “No. You’re dismissed.”

Stiles didn’t move to leave. He chewed on his lower lip, arms tucking behind his back as he had before. It seemed to give him a greater sense of confidence, lifting his shoulders and puffing his chest forward. “My lord, if I might make a recommendation.”

“A recommendation as to your services?” Peter asked, amused. Perhaps Stiles was more eager for his duties than he had let on.

“No, my lord. A recommendation as to my dismissal.”

“Are you dismissing your dismissal?” Peter teased.

Stiles lifted his chin. “It’s just, my lord, that I am assigned here not for the virtue of your pleasure but _for_ your pleasure that you might not besmirch virtue. To dismiss me from your chambers against His Majesty’s wishes might seem, I fear, dismissive.”

Peter lifted an eyebrow, once again impressed and not unconcerned by this commoner’s political cunning. “Then you suggest I use you to my pleasure?” he asked

With a wicked grin, Stiles replied, “No, my lord. But I don’t suggest you send me from the room.”

Rolling his eyes, Peter cast his gaze about the room. There were no servants’ chambers adjoined to his, else Deaton would have been staying there. To send Stiles to the couch in the solar would have the same effect as sending him out when the servants came in to stoke the fire. “I don’t suppose you have a clever reason you can’t sleep on the floor?”

“The stones are quite cold,” Stiles observed slyly. He sat on the end of the bed again. “My lord, it wouldn’t do for your bedwarmer to shiver himself to death in the night.”

“And here I thought the purpose of a bedwarmer was to warm the bed, not to be warmer _in_ bed,” Peter replied flatly. He shook his head and made for his preferred side of said bed. “Clean yourself up, then. I won’t have dirty feet in the sheets.” He pulled back the blankets, pleased to see that Stiles was doing as he was told, making for the wash basin. “And put out the candles on your way back.”

“Yes, my lord,” Stiles replied as he wiped himself down with the same cloth Peter had used.

“And if you disturb my sleep, you will be sent to the floor, shivers or no.”

“Yes, my lord.”

* * *

  
  


Peter woke to the sound of a thump and wood scraping across stone. His body reacted more acutely than his mind as he sat with a jolt. Blinking in the dark, he saw a figure in the pale moonlight, bent over by his trunk on the other side of the room. He was rubbing at his shin. Sluggishly, Peter’s brain pieced together the identity of the figure.

“Stiles,” he grumbled. “Why are you awake?”

The boy stood up and turned back to look at him. “You were snoring, my lord,” he said, voice soft.

Snoring! Peter didn’t snore. And if he did, a servant had no place to tell him so. “I beg your pardon,” he huffed in offense.

“Very gracious of you, my lord,” Stiles said. “Pardon granted.”

Peter squeezed his eyes shut and flopped back onto the bed. He wondered, with some resentment, how the boy’s tongue could still be so sharp in the dead of night, just awakened. “Why are you up, then?” he groaned into his pillow. Then, more hopefully, “Are you leaving?”

“No, not to worry, my lord,” Stiles replied. “I was simply looking for a cushion firm enough to smother you with.”

Lifting his head again, Peter squinted at the boy, who stood motionless, hands behind his back. Dryly, Peter reprimanded, “I don’t think we know one another well enough for such jesting.”

“Best we stick to japing, then,” Stiles shot back with a wicked grin.*

“Were we on japing terms, you might not be so restless.” Peter leered. Stiles wore only a thin white nightshirt, one of Peter’s which hung loosely at his chest and left little to the imagination.

Stiles came back to the bed, crawling onto it and toward Peter. The nightshirt gaped obscenely at the neck, and were it not for the shadow of night, Peter would have been able to see straight down the front of it. “Is that what you need, my lord?” he asked, a purr of seduction in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Do you need some attention to relax you back to sleep?” He continued forward until he hovered over Peter. “After all, I am here to serve and could not refuse you.”

Caving to impulse, Peter reached out, tracing his fingers over the pale, sharp line of Stiles’s jaw, following it down his neck to his exposed collarbone. “I think it might be cruel,” he said.

“To bed one who cannot refuse?”

Peter cupped Stiles’s cheek in his hand. “To bed one who must sleep on the floor after.”

For a moment, Stiles blinked at him, confused. Then the confusion soured into a petulant sort of outrage, the outrage of a servant unable to voice it as such. “My lord,” he began.

Peter shrugged and patted Stiles’s cheek. “I told you not to disturb my sleep.”

The chattering of the boy’s teeth may have disturbed his sleep farther, but the satisfaction of his miserable look made a fair trade-off.

* * *

* _In the 15_ _th_ _century “to jape,” which had previously meant “to joke” took on a double-entendre meaning of “to have sex with” and fell out of polite usage._

* * *

  
  


The morning brought perhaps a mild sense of guilt when Peter saw Stiles. He lay curled in a ball under a cloak on the fur rug by the fireplace. There hadn’t even been a fire burning in the bedchambers the night before. The heat from the fire in the solar below was enough, this time of year, to keep the room at a pleasant enough temperature. Pleasant enough, that was, if you had the luxury of a bed.

Deaton folded his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow at Peter, amused to hear whatever explanation he might offer.

“It was late. You know how I hate to have my sleep disturbed,” he huffed.

“I’ll go make sure the maids have made breakfast for two,” Deaton said. How a man could express so much judgment while never uttering a word on the subject of judgment, Peter would never understand.

“For three, if you haven’t eaten.”

Deaton smiled and took his leave.

Peter nudged the boy with his foot. “Up,” he said.

Stiles did not startle nor clamber clumsily toward wakefulness. He opened his eyes, seemingly fully aware, and glared at Peter with a loathing he had not expected.

Caught off-guard, Peter took a half step back. He had planned to wake the boy and insist that he make himself useful, but perhaps a bit of peacemaking was in order. “Get in the bed,” he sighed. “I’m done with it, and it should still be warm.”

That seemed to clear up the odious expression. Stiles uncurled from his cramped position and made his way quickly to slip into the bed.

Going on with his daily preparations as if alone, Peter washed and pulled on his shirt and breeches, leaving off the outer clothing until he had eaten and found a servant to assist with dressing.

He would no doubt be asked to endure another day at court, gritting his teeth through backhanded conversations about his father’s folly in war and his family’s subsequent humiliations. Peter loathed how they carefully (and frequently) enunciated _Lord_ Peter, as if they had ever addressed him before and it was some effort to remember his new station. Or, worse, as if he might have forgotten it and needed reminding.

In the solar, he found Deaton already tucking into his breakfast, a spread of summer offerings. Berries and cream, eggs, sausages. He sat facing the open doorway to the stairs. _It may be more difficult to hear through a closed door_ , Deaton had advised him on their first day here, _but far easier to press one’s ear to the door undetected._ Peter took the seat opposite him and began loading his plate.

“The boy is still sleeping?” Deaton asked, tone carefully neutral.

“I didn’t fuck him,” Peter muttered. Then, before Deaton could protest, he glanced up and insisted, “You were thinking it.”

Tipping his head to the side in a conciliatory gesture, Deaton glanced over Peter’s shoulder toward the door. “He is too clever for a bedwarmer,” he noted, “and it’s strange the king should send him, despite the reasoning he gave. Princess Jennifer is hardly in danger of your attentions.”

“You think he’s a spy.” Peter hummed and took a bite of sausage. “I thought that, too. He was going through my desk when I came in last night.” He chewed his food while he mentally reviewed their interactions the night previous. Peter shook his head. “Still, I should think a proper spy would be less resistant to fulfilling his pretense.”

Deaton lifted both eyebrows in clear judgment, but before Peter could so much as utter a syllable in his own defense, he loudly said, “My lord, if I might be so bold: the black cotehardie is too stern for a day at court.”

Peter didn’t hesitate, just picked up the ruse. “A doublet, then? The yellow, perhaps. It’s a cheerful color and still in good fashion.”

The servant, a young woman of plain appearance, approached from behind him with a small scroll of paper. “I beg pardon the interruption, my lord. An invitation from Princes Aidan and Ethan to take dinner in their quarters at midday.”

“Yes, thank you,” Peter replied, taking the scroll without opening it. “You may send my grateful acceptance.”

Peter didn’t turn to watch her leave. Instead, he watched Deaton as he watched her leave. Only when the tense suspicion on his face relaxed did Peter resume their previous conversation. “I did not press the matter with the boy, if that’s what you were thinking. He made it clear that his role is compulsory and that he had no interest in performing in it. His outrage seemed genuine, I think, which is my only pause at a theory of espionage.”

Deaton’s brow pinched pensively as he worked at his berries and cream. “It could be true both that he is intended to act as a spy and that his role is compulsory,” he theorized. “In such a case, he could be brought to our side.”

“To what end?”

“To whatever end we may need him for.”

Peter chewed and pondered silently on that. Before he could formulate a response, the door to his bedchambers opened, and bare feet appeared on the top step, just visible from where he sat. “Come eat,” Peter called. “There’s enough for you.”

Stiles still wore his baggy nightshirt. He looked groggy and sleep-soft in a way he had not in the middle of the night nor when Peter roused him this morning. Either he had just found some decent sleep in the past hour and abandoned it or he was putting on an act. He cast a wary eye between the two of them, an open chair beside each of them, and chose the one next to Deaton.

Peter’s eyes flicked toward his manservant’s to see if he found the choice as interesting as Peter did. It put him elbow to elbow with a servant, so perhaps he was more comfortable in his own class. It also put him under more direct scrutiny from Peter. “I’m surprised you didn’t sleep the day away,” Peter commented. “You slept so poorly in the night.”

Stiles kept his eyes on the food as he filled his plate. “The bed was more comfortable than the floor, my lord, but neither more comfortable than a familiar space, I fear.”

Deaton spoke up: “Where did you live before this? With your mother and father?”

Stiles peeked at him out of the corner of his eye before answering. “My father. My mother is dead.”

“A sorry thing,” Peter commented. “How then did you come upon your current appointment?”

The boy looked up, a spoonful of cream poised in front of him, and for the first time since last night, Peter saw that sharp glint of mischief in his face return. “I was appointed, my lord.” He slipped the spoon into his mouth slowly and slurped the cream from it.

Then, at once, he jumped in his seat, dropping the spoon, and looked to his side, a betrayed look on his face. Deaton had a thumb and forefinger extended, and Peter realized with belated delight that he’d given the boy a good pinch. “You’ll not be insolent to my master in my presence, boy,” he scolded.

Peter grinned and shrugged his shoulders in helpless concession to Deaton’s rules. These days, Deaton said ‘my lord’ either in artifice or, occasionally, in derision. He had used ‘my prince’ more liberally, a sign of fealty and dedication. Peter couldn’t help but notice that he wielded ‘my master’ nearly in inverse to its meaning. He spoke it with possessiveness.

“Apologies, my lord,” Stiles grumbled, rubbing at his arm. “My father is a fisherman, but has fallen to ill health of late. When we could not pay our taxes, our collector found this a suitable compromise.”

A plausible enough story, as far as Peter knew. He would defer to Deaton’s judgment on the affairs of the lower class, though. They ceased their interrogations by silent mutual agreement, instead turning to discussion of Peter’s upcoming engagement with the twin princes, which Stiles ignored in favor of stuffing his face as quickly as seemed possible without risk of choking.

Finally, Deaton stood and offered a bow. “My lord, if you’ll excuse me, I still have the business of finding you a jeweler today.” He, in fact, was searching for a discrete agent that might ferry messages back to his sister in The Hills, and Peter understood his meaning.

“Of course. I hope you find a suitable candidate.”

Stiles watched Deaton leave before asking, “He wouldn’t stay to help you dress?”

“I have you for that,” Peter answered, leaning back in his chair to signal he had eaten his fill.

“My lord, that is not part of a bedwarmer’s duties,” Stiles informed him with a look that fell short of its intended subservience.

Peter lifted an eyebrow and smirked. “And should you prefer I collect on those which are your duties?”

The look soured, and Stiles’s jaw twitched. He set his fork down. “Shall we get you dressed, my lord?”

“That’s what I thought,” Peter laughed.


	2. The Poet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Schemes, court politics, some foreboding news, and poetry.

“Princes Ethan and Aiden,” Peter raged, “must be the most false, _recreant_ , skulking gossips in all of creation. Had their father teats, they would surely suckle on them, they are so craven to his will.” He paced his chambers as he yanked at the fastenings of his doublet. “To think he expects to pass his throne to one – to both, even, for the two are nigh inseparable. I should expect each to pay audience to the other on his wedding night, the way they cling.”

Deaton sat at his desk, chin resting on his hand as he took in Peter’s fuming with a mild humor.

“And, you know, I should think it might be better were it only one to rule. Somehow, against mathematic reason, their mental simplicity has not an additive effect, that between the two they might form an intelligent thought on occasion, but instead a multiplicative effect in which the dullness of each compounds the dullness of the other into something to which I believe the world has not yet born witness.” Finally free of his doublet, Peter flung it at his dressing screen and started in on the fastenings of his hose.

“I suppose you enjoyed your dinner?” Deaton quipped, and Peter had to bite the inside of his cheek to stifle a laugh.

He turned to his manservant with jaw and mouth drawn tight and spat, “Weren’t you, just this morning, remarking on the perils of insolence?”

Deaton schooled his expression well, bowing his head. “Apologies, of course, my lord. Please, go on.”

“Right.” Peter drudged more scorn forth as he sat on the edge of his bed and rolled down the hose. “I know not whether they more resemble something serpentine and vile, a two headed hydra, or a couple of clucking hens. Why, were it not for my current position -”

“My lord,” Deaton said loudly, interrupting.

Peter turned to follow Deaton’s gaze and found Stiles standing in the open doorway to his bedchambers, eyes wide.

“Do you make it a habit to play eavesdropper?” Peter snapped with a viciousness he had not yet shown the boy.

“Beg pardon, my lord.” Stiles’s hands fidgeted in front of him.

“Why are you here?” he demanded. “Unless you intend to make proper use of that mouth, I see no purpose in you loitering here with it hanging open.”

Stiles’s jaw snapped shut, and he swallowed, visibly cowed. “I will find another space to loiter, my lord,” he assured, then turned to leave.

“Stiles,” Peter called, stilling him before he could take his first step out. “I trust you’ll not despoil your mouth either with petty gossip.”

Looking over his shoulder, Stiles studied Peter and then, interestingly, paid the same attention to Deaton. “Of course not, my lord.”

Peter and Deaton listened to the creak of stairs as Stiles descended. Then Deaton peeled up the corner of the fur rug before the fire and lowered himself onto his belly. Peering through the spyhole they had cut in the floor, he was silent for a time. Finally, he got back to his feet, kicking the rug into place.

“ _Had their father teats_?” he quoted with a laugh.

“Too much?”

Deaton shook his head. “Just enough. We shall see if your words make their way to the king’s ears.” He plucked Peter’s doublet from the dressing screen, bringing it to the wardrobe to put away. “You know, I sometimes forget your talent for slander.”

“It’s only slander if it’s false,” Peter muttered. He brought his hose to the wardrobe himself, passing them to Deaton to put away.

Holding up a hand, Deaton refused them. “Send those to the laundry – you’ve worn them thrice.”

“Only thrice,” Peter protested.

“You live on your enemy’s expense now,” Deaton reminded him. “Wastefulness is the least punishable rebellion available to you.”

Peter thought on that a moment, then said, “The doublet was also worn thrice.”

Deaton winked. “So it was.”

* * *

  
  


In Fort Triskelion of The Hills, the usual custom was to sup in one’s quarters most nights, and often to invite a companion or two to join in. Group suppers in the banquet hall were reserved for special occasions – though, the Hales might have found more occasions to deem ‘special’ than most.

In Eastfall, a _grand_ banquet hall served such a purpose for large groups and occasions, but a lesser banquet hall could serve small groups of nobles. As such, King Deucalion and his vile queen insisted upon formal suppers nearly every night. Peter loathed them, but to decline the invitation would only cause further injury to his enfeebled status at court.

Peter might not have begrudged these occasions if supper only meant enduring another hour of politics. Alas, it also meant enduring the seemingly endless horrors of coastal cookery while refraining from showing his opinion of it on his face.

Triskelion, landlocked by more than two days' ride at the nearest route to sea, enjoyed fish from the nearby rivers and lakes. Occasionally, overland traders brought larger ocean fish, salted or dried. For good reason, Peter thought, no trader had ever thought to bring them fare such as -

“Eels reversed,” the head cook announced as the servants brought the plates out. He was a stout old man with ruddy cheeks and wild gray curls. He clapped his hands together and watched with delight as the nobles looked upon his abomination.

On Peter’s plate sat a long, fat rectangle of what might have been meat under all the fat. He had already endured one course of eel on his first night at Eastfall, though they had then been mercifully hidden in a soup. He lifted his fork and poked at it. A bit of fat fell away, and he fought not to gag.

Against his better judgment, Peter looked at the cook and asked, “Might I ask how one goes about reversing an eel?”

“Most certainly, my lord.” The cook gave an unsteady little bow. “The eels are cut and opened lengthwise. Meats and spices are applied on the outside before they are stitched back together – reversed, with the meats inside.”

Peter, feeling faint, painted on a smile. “You seafarers here on the coast are most creative.”

Queen Kali, though she seemed to sense his distress, only laughed. “Come now, Peter. This is a court favorite. I think you would enjoy it.” She sat at the end of the table beside her husband, with Princes Ethan and Aiden between her and Peter. On her head, she wore an understated gold circlet which dipped low on her forehead. Still, she held her chin aloft as if still balancing the more extravagant crown she bore through a day at court.

Taking up his knife, Peter cut into the packet of eel, sure to go deep enough to get at the meats within. The first texture, as his teeth pressed into it, was all grease and fat as he had anticipated. Then he hit the unsettling toughness of muscle. Below that, a pocket of meat which did little to offset the rest. “Mm,” he said, keeping his expression carefully neutral. Peter forced himself to swallow, and it almost didn’t go down. “I can see why it’s so popular.”

Princess Jennifer sat across the table, the neckline of her gown showing none of the concern for her virtue that her father seemed to have. She, like the twins, had inherited the gleeful cruelty that adorned their mother’s demeanor, deceitful and petty. Deucalion was not a kind man by any stretch of the imagination, but his unpleasantness was a brutality which did not waver but neither did it hide. With the king, one knew where he stood. With the queen and her posterity, one could only guess by the curve of their smiles.

“Lord Peter,” the princess said, “I hear early congratulations are in order.”

Before Peter could inquire as to her meaning, the king cut in: “Ah, my dear I have not yet had the chance to inform our guest.” He turned to Peter and explained, “Your sister and my son have advanced the date for their betrothal. The wedding will take place next month.”

The eel churned in his gut.

Peter had only met Prince Ennis once, during the same treaty negotiations that had sent him and Deaton to Eastfall. By reputation, Ennis took after his father’s warlike spirit. He had achieved great success leading the armies of Eastfall, not by particular cunning or inspiring nature but by an iron fist. If one paid heed to rumors, Ennis had once strangled the life from a disobedient lieutenant, one-handed. When a village loyal to The Hills rose up against his occupying army, he and his men razed it to the ground and enslaved or murdered every man, woman, and child therein.

Talia would never _choose_ to wed herself to such a man sooner than was absolutely required, nor would their father urge an enemy-turned-successor into the family.

Prince Ennis, perhaps most importantly, was Deucalion’s eldest son by his first wife. His betrothal to Talia had been a compromise upon his father’s refusal to subjugate their lands to Eastfall. To combine their lands into a single kingdom, his father had insisted, would do little to prevent the impending battle for succession in Deucalion’s own family. Surely his queen would insist that _her_ eldest son should take the throne over the rights of her ill-acquainted stepson. In keeping the kingdoms separate, Deucalion could ensure there were enough thrones to go around when he died.

Peter had stood silently as his father made his arguments, biting his tongue and fighting to keep the rage from his expression. For, in fighting to keep his own throne, his father had sold Peter’s birthright from under him. It meant that, somehow, Peter would need to be done away with.

The not-so-distant memories of that day swirled through his head as Peter poked at his salad greens and tried to get his head around this news. It could mean nothing good. With a weak smile, Peter asked, “And will his majesty attend the wedding?”

By which he desperately yearned to ask, _Will I?_

“Yes,” Deucalion agreed. “My wife and daughter shall accompany me, and we will leave the twins to keep you company.”

Ethan shot him a nasty smile that promised just the sort of company he could expect.

Kali devised a look of sympathy – Peter assumed it could be nothing but device – and said, “It is unfortunate that you should miss it, Lord Peter. You understand, with the wounds between our nations so fresh, your presence here is all that assures our safety in Triskelion.”

“Yes, of course,” Peter agreed. Reluctantly, he did understand. He tried another bite of eel and found it fouler than the last.

The conversation at the head table turned to the details of their travels, Jennifer asking after the length and manner of the journey. With his pride stinging and aching for retaliation, Peter turned to Ethan. “Pity the two of you could not attend.” Aiden turned to listen as well. “You two have never been to Triskelion, after all. Nor most stretches of The Hills, I believe?”

“You know we have not,” Aiden practically growled.

“Remind me: to what daring pursuit were you assigned during the war?” Peter pressed.

According to the chatter Deaton had picked up, there had been quite a quarrel between the king and queen. Kali insisted her sons were too young and precious to risk on the battlefields of The Hills. In a feeble attempt to stave off the humiliations of cowardice, Deucalion sent the twins south, supposedly to deal with a threat of raiders.

Ethan made to reach for the basket of bread in the middle of the table, his arm knocking solidly into the side of his wine goblet. It clattered onto the table, its contents pouring almost directly into Peter’s lap and onto his light green cotehardie.

“Oh, I beg pardon, Lord Peter!” Ethan exclaimed, moving back as a maid rushed in to mop up the mess. “A terrible mess I’ve made. I do apologize.” The commotion had drawn the attention of the others back to them.

The maid wiped the still-dripping wine from the table, then turned the rag to mop ineffectually at Peter’s clothing. “Fine,” he muttered, shooing her hands away. “It’s fine. My appetite is about sated in any case. I think I should return to my chambers early.” Rising from his seat, Peter dipped his head toward the king. “Your majesty, I bid your leave and thank you again for your hospitality.”

“Of course, Lord Peter,” Deucalion said, casting an amused look at his sons. “Sleep well.”

With his back to the table as he walked out, Peter let the contempt and rage show on his face finally. The servants averted their gazes and gave him space. The candles had barely begun to burn, so Deaton would not be to his chambers for quite some time yet, expecting Peter to linger at supper, then dessert. He caught the elbow of a servant just outside the banquet hall. “Have food sent to my quarters. Something simple – no eel.”

The servant scurried off, and Peter continued at a fast stride until he reached the stairwell of his tower. He paused, a hand on the clammy, damp stone wall for support. He exhaled.

The only reason to move his sister’s wedding to an earlier date was if they meant to kill his father.

The tears burned behind his eyes, not for mourning but for rage. For frustration. For the sheer impotence of his current situation. Peter slammed his fist against the wall.

In his quarters, he found the boy lounging on the couch, gnawing on a heel of bread. He grinned at Peter, seemingly unsurprised to see him return at such an early hour. Then his gaze dropped to the soiled front of Peter’s cotehardie. “My lord, traditionally, the wine tastes best when applied to the tongue,” Stiles advised.

Peter was in no mood for insolent spies. “Get up,” he snapped. “You’ll help me disrobe.” He continued up the stairs, not looking behind to see if Stiles obeyed his order.

Sure enough the boy followed just behind him into his bedchambers. Peter turned to face him, and Stiles stopped short. He opened his mouth, then shut it again. Then, finally, he said, “My lord, if I might start with the laces.”

“Ah,” Peter agreed, recalling that this particular cotehardie laced at the back for a tighter fit. He turned again to give Stiles access. Fingertips pressed to the center of his back, steadying, as the other hand made quick work of the laces. A tap at his hip signaled Peter to turn around.

Stiles kept his eyes lowered, focused on the fastenings as he worked them open. His tongue poked out between his lips in concentration, and Peter couldn’t help but recall his initial assessment of Stiles from the night before: that he was, indeed, quite attractive.

“You’re in a foul mood,” Stiles remarked once he had the last of the buttons undone. He slid his hands under the garment to push it over Peter’s shoulders. The action finally caused him to lift his chin, to look Peter in the eye. They stood so close, Peter could feel his breath.

“Perhaps because my urges are not sated,” he said.

“Back on that, are we?”

He could do this. He could instruct Stiles to see to his needs, to service him. He could lean down and capture the boy’s insolent mouth with his own, bite at his lips, taste him. Take him. He could have Stiles however he wanted. On his knees, bent over the desk, tied to the bedposts. Peter could feel a bit of control, at least here. At least tonight.

A glimmer of wariness crossed Stiles’s expression, and the thought deflated at once. He swatted Stiles’s hands away. “I can do the rest myself.”

Stiles took a step back. “Would my lord mind if I made a fire in here tonight?” he asked. “So I can sleep beside it.”

Peter huffed. “Sleep in the bed. I won’t send you out again.”

* * *

  
  


The next week passed much the same: Peter woke beside a beautiful bedwarmer who would not touch him, gritted his teeth through a day at court, ate foul suppers with still fouler company, then returned to his bedchamber to lie beside a beautiful bedwarmer who would not touch him.

It wasn’t all bad. Stiles tended to disappear during the day – to where, Peter cared not to ask. Between court events, he had occasion to talk with Deaton or to practice with a sword or mace in the yard. Peter could admit that Eastfall possessed an admirable training yard, well-stocked and well-tended. Sand covered the area, which provided a delightful challenge for footing.

After one such session, sweat-soaked in a way the humidity would not relieve, Peter put up his practice sword and headed inside for his chambers. He had donned mail that day, wanting some extra weight on his shoulders but not willing to endure the heat of full armor. It clinked softly, echoing in the long stone passageway. The murmur of the city outside wafted in on the damp breeze, muted.

Then, ahead, a scuffle sounded in the hall, indistinct shouting and then, “Hold still, you dog!”

A familiar voice cried out in response, “I swear, I wasn’t trying to steal anything!”

Peter rounded the corner and found Stiles, the back of his shirt clenched in a guard’s fist. “We’ll see about that!” the guard snarled.

“What is the meaning of this?” Peter demanded, lifting his chin in an imperative manner.

He recognized the guard, though he could not have named him. He was one of the kingsguard, a brutish assortment of fellows. “My lord. A servant sneaking into the library,” he explained, shaking Stiles in his grip, as if Peter might not realize which servant he had referred to. “Trying to steal books to sell, most like.”

Stiles stared at him, owl-eyed and pleading. Peter sighed. “Release him at once, you oaf. This is my servant, here on my instruction.” Stiles’s eyes, if possible, went even wider.

“My lord?” the guard said, uncertain even as he released his grip on the boy.

Ignoring the man, Peter asked, “Stiles, were you able to get the book I asked for?”

“No, my lord,” Stiles said quickly, and Peter felt both relief and dread that the boy felt so at home in a ruse. “He apprehended me before I could.”

Peter turned a sharp eye on the guard, daring him to accuse Peter of lying. “You may leave us,” he snapped. He stepped forward and wrapped a hand around the back of Stiles’s neck, guiding him back to the library. The caretaker of the library cast a wary eye to Stiles, but bit his tongue when he saw Peter at his side. They went deeper into the rows of shelves, the musty smell overtaking his senses.

Stiles murmured, “Thank you.”

“What _were_ you doing in here?” Peter asked, keeping his voice low. He had not let go of his grip on the boy’s neck.

Stiles glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, head bowed. “I was looking for something to read.”

Peter let go, stopping to face Stiles. “You can read.”

Stiles lifted his chin. “Yes, my lord. I did imply as much with my explanation.”

Snatching a book off a nearby shelf at random, Peter opened it and pushed it forward. “Read, then,” he challenged, not about to take the brat at his word.

Stiles squinted at the book. Between the tall rows of bookshelves, it was quite dim in the library, even at midday. “I’ll just -” He tipped his head toward the window at the end of the row and went to stand in the rectangle of light it cast on the floor. He wore a deep red tunic that went to his knees, unbelted so it hung loose and obscured the lines of lean muscle Peter knew hid below. Still, with the sunlight spilling over his pale neck and bared collarbone, the way he bit into his lower lip slowly as he scanned the page, Peter couldn’t help but admire him.

“This slaying adder and venemous hath wit to love and affection,” Stiles read, not faltering in the slightest. Peter had not paid attention to what book he had chosen, and his brow furrowed at the topic. “...and loveth his mate as it were by love of wedlock, and liveth not well without company. Therefore if the one is slain, the other pursueth him that slew that other -”

“Fine,” Peter said, raising a hand. “You can read.”

“Yes,” Stiles agreed. “It would seem so, my lord.” He snapped the book shut and put it back on the shelf it had been plucked from.

“Make your selections and let’s go, then,” he prompted. “The servants are preparing a bath in my chambers and I’d rather not let it go cold.”

* * *

  
  


Rather than stealing off to whatever hidden corner of the castle he usually occupied in the day, Stiles followed Peter to his quarters with a small selection of poetry books. He actually made himself useful without being told, helping Peter out of his mail before settling onto the couch.

“So how did you learn to read?” Peter asked, shucking his smallclothes beside the bath.

“My father wished it,” Stiles explained. He had curled up in the corner of the couch, one of the books propped on his knees. “He sent me to study with our local healer for a time, long enough to learn.”

Peter stepped into his bath water with a sigh, finding it quite warm. “He wanted you to be a healer?”

When he looked over at Stiles, he found the boy watching him rather intently and without any apparent shame. Not that anyone could be shamed for enjoying such a view, Peter thought. “A healer of souls, perhaps. He hoped I might join the church.”

An ambition now thoroughly beyond possibility, given his current position. Even if Peter never bade him fulfill his role as bedwarmer, the church would not accept the claim. Settling into his bath, he thought that, perhaps, their situations were not so different. Both with promising futures planned out for them, then snatched away by the whims and demands of their superiors.

“Read aloud,” Peter requested. “I should like to hear it.”

“Oh you should?” Stiles replied, the corner of his lips tipping up. “My lord, this is another of those tasks not in a bedwarmer’s duties.”

Peter grinned back at him. “No, perhaps not. But I rather think you enjoy the sound of your own voice, all the same.”

Stiles laughed and began:

“ _Lord God in Tr_ _i_ _nit_ _y_ _,  
G_ _ive_ _home He_ _a_ _ven for to se_ _e_ _  
That love the gaman and gle_ _e_ _  
And g_ _uests_ _to fe_ _ed_ _._

_There folk sits in fere  
Should men harken and hear  
Of good that before them were  
That lived in arthede._ _”_

Peter chuckled and reached for a cloth to wash with. When Stiles did not continue, he looked over and found him staring again. “What?”

“You laughed,” Stiles said, affronted.

“I only recognized the poem,” Peter assured him as he scrubbed at the back of his neck. “ _Sir Degrevant_. It’s a good one.” When Stiles’s guarded expression did not clear, he added, “You have a lovely reading voice. Please, go on.”

That seemed to do the trick, and Stiles went on with the poem. By the time Sir Degrevant had begun his battle against the loathsome Earl, who had been poaching his deer, the bathwater had gone lukewarm. Peter stepped out to dry himself. The reading trailed off again, and this time he didn’t need to wonder why. He kept his back to Stiles and took his time dabbing at the water on his front.

Peter glanced over his shoulder. “Shall we go upstairs?” he asked. Stiles’s cheeks went pink, but before he could protest, Peter added, “To read. I should like to continue the story somewhere more comfortable.”

After a moment of waggling his jaw soundlessly, Stiles said, “I think I should need a drink. My throat is gone dry.”

“Fetch a wine skin from the cupboard,” Peter agreed, then continued to his bedchambers bare.

Peter donned a pair of breeches only and was just settling onto the bed when Stiles joined him with the book and a skin of wine. He looked more nervous than Peter had seen him.

“Come,” Peter said, patting the bed. “You have your drink, and I will read a while.”

They lay beside one another atop the bedclothes, the afternoon light slanting through the stained glass and casting the room in a fiery orange. Peter read through the battle and to the first sight of Sir Degrevant’s love-to-be, Melydor. Stiles passed him the wine skin and read the next few pages. They traded off like that for a long while, both relaxing with the wine and with the rhythm of the story.

Soon they were nearing the end, Peter reading Sir Degrevant’s entreaty to Melydor:

“ _Right about midnight  
Said Sir Degrevant the knight:  
‘When wilt thou, worthy wight,  
Listen me tell?_

 _For love my he_ _a_ _rt w_ _il_ _l tob_ _re_ _st!  
When w_ _i_ _lt thou br_ _i_ _ng me to rest?_  
Lady, wysse me the best,  
_If_ _i_ _t be th_ _y_ _w_ _i_ _ll.’”_

He felt Stiles shift beside him. Expecting the wine passed back, Peter turned but found the skin had been set aside. Lying on his side, Stiles stared at Peter with a soft expression. He searched his wine-hazed mind for some tease, something clever to say that Stiles might retort with words cleverer still.

Stiles spoke before he could. “You’re not what I expected,” he said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cleaned up some of the Middle English nightmare spelling in Sir Degrevant to make it more reader-friendly, but some words used in it don't exist anymore. Here's a more modern translation of the passages I included:
> 
> “Lord God in Trinity/ let them see heaven/ who love pleasure and merriment/ and having guests to feed.  
> Folks sit together/to listen and hear/of good people before them/that lived in olden times."
> 
> "Right about midnight/ Said Sir Degrevant the knight:/ 'When will you, beautiful creature/ Hear what I say?  
> For my heart bursts with love/ When will you give me peace of mind?/ Lady, show me your best/ If you choose to.'"
> 
> This is an old poem and is a love story about a noble knight of the round table who prefers fighting in tourneys and glory in combat to frivolous ideas of love. Then, while in a feud with his neighbor, he falls in love with his neighbor's daughter and courts her in secret. Their love is helped along by Sir Degrevant's loyal squire and Lady Melydor's maid. They end up getting her father's blessing and marrying.


	3. The Suspect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As their flirtations continue, Peter wonders why Stiles won't return his affections. King Deucalion and his family prepare to attend Talia and Ennis's wedding.

The days passed more easily now that he and Stiles got on. Peter didn’t trust the boy, of course. He knew too much of the world to go that far. Still, they found a sort of rhythm between the two of them. He and Deaton had developed a mutual amusement over Stiles’s sleep-fogged mornings, finding it the one time of day they could hope to trip his sharp tongue. Then Stiles helped Peter to dress, and they parted ways to attend to what matters each attended to in the day.

Peter still hadn’t figured out quite what Stiles occupied himself with in his absence. He occasionally saw him in the company of the court physician’s new apprentice, a widely grinning young man with a mop of black curls on his head. Other than that, he seemed to vanish entirely. Serious interrogation on the matter wouldn’t suit their new amicable relations, so he settled for teasing, to which Stiles only responded in kind.

“Have you been off causing trouble, then?” he asked one day.

Peter sat at the table in the solar, a quill pinched between ink-stained fingers. He had been penning an account of his experiences at Eastfall that their new messenger might convey it to Talia. Deaton had been hard at work maintaining the channels of communication between themselves and home. It kept him away frequently during the day.

Now, though, in early afternoon, when most of the castle took respite from the shimmering heat of midday summer, he could rely upon Stiles’s arrival at the door.

“Sowing discord? Picking fights with squires? Chasing after chambermaids?” Peter went on.

Stiles lifted his chin in a mock of offense as he stepped inside. “My lord, you must be confused. You are describing the affairs of noblemen, not of a servant.”

Peter set the quill aside and slid his chair back from the table. “And I suppose that’s what you get up to all day? Serving?”

“Why, of course, my lord.” Stiles came to the opposite side of the table, leaning forward on his elbows so his legs stuck out behind him. “For a servant’s purpose is to serve. So accustomed are we to serving that, in absence of other instruction, we have no choice but to serve ourselves.”

He longed to reach across the table and touch Stiles’s smirking lips, but refrained. Just as well, a chambermaid came in then with another pail of water for the bath.

“That should do, m’lord,” she said. “If you’re not ready just yet, I can have another boiled downstairs to warm it up. No sense lighting a fire in here in this heat.”

Peter didn’t look away from Stiles as he replied, “That won’t be necessary, thank you.” Once she had taken her leave, closing the door behind her, Peter said, “The bath is for you, if you want it. I know you haven’t had occasion to take a proper bath since you came here.”

Surprise crossed Stiles’s face, and pleasure. “Methinks my lord is simply trying to get himself a good view,” he teased.

Now it was Peter’s turn to play at offense. “Ogling a man in his bath? I fear you’re describing the affairs of servants, not noblemen.”

The gleeful expression that won him was worth a thousand smiles of a king.

Despite his protestations, Peter did allow his gaze to linger as Stiles undressed. From the flush on his cheeks, Stiles knew it, too. Under the long tunics, his breeches were longer than the current fashion for nobles – something Peter’s grandfather might have worn – and his hose barely reached his thighs. In a fleeting thought, he considered that he might get Stiles some better clothing. Then he reminded himself that Stiles was a servant.

Peter moved to the couch, picking up a book on his way. He didn’t pretend to start reading yet. Stiles kept his back to Peter as he undressed, but when he turned to get into the bath, Peter spied arousal between his legs.

“I believe my lord is at servant’s work,” Stiles said, settling into the water.

“Were I a servant, I might offer to bathe his lordship,” Peter replied. Stiles had never made such an offer, but then he never _offered_ to do any servile tasks.

Stiles narrowed his eyes. “Were I a lord, I might refuse.”

Undeterred, Peter pressed on. “As you are a servant, then, in absence of other instruction, I suppose you might be tempted to self-service in a moment such as this?”

For one delightful, promising moment, Stiles appeared enticed by the suggestion, his lower lip caught between his teeth, eyes glittering. Then he seemed to settle himself and a somberness took hold where interest had been. “As you are a noble, do you instruct it?” he asked.

Peter sighed, letting the game go. “No, Stiles,” he assured him. “Not an instruction. Never an instruction.”

* * *

  
  


It would have been easy to justify crossing that line. Stiles responded positively to Peter’s flirtations and flirted back almost relentlessly. He could tell himself that Stiles was making a game of it, seeing how far he could push Peter until he couldn’t resist any longer. He could tell himself that Stiles needed an order to feel morally absolved of anything physical that occurred between them.

And then there was the salve.

A few days after the bath incident, Peter returned to his chambers from a grueling day of practice in the yard. He had worked at the flail, which he often preferred to a sword on the battlefield. It was more effectively wielded by horseback, he thought, and gave more strength at range. Unfortunately, it also wrenched his shoulders something terrible, the way the weight of the spiked ball hurled away from the arm.

With a mind to wipe down and collapse face-first onto his bed for a nap, Peter went to the armory storage in the corner of his solar. He couldn’t easily remove the mail on his own even when his arms didn’t feel like they had been battered with the mace themselves. It weighed two stone and fitted tightly enough in the arms that it had to be laced in the back. He grunted as he reached behind himself to fumble for the laces, shoulders burning with the movement.

A creak sounded on the steps behind him, followed by the whisper of bare feet against the stone floor. “Let me,” Stiles said, swatting his hands away. He made quick work of the laces.

As the weight of the mail slid forward onto his arms, they nearly gave way. Peter barely managed to catch the mail with a noisy hiss of pain.

Stiles clicked his tongue and snatched the mail away, finally coming into view. “You can scarcely lift your arms,” he chastised. He wore only a thigh-length tunic, no hose beneath. His nimble hands did away with Peter’s undershirt, supporting each arm by the elbow as he pushed the sleeves off. With Peter bare-chested, Stiles poked and prodded at his aching muscles. He shook his head. “Come upstairs, my lord. I have something for this.”

In the bedchamber, Stiles pulled Peter’s desk chair to the middle of the room and ushered him to sit on it. Peter listened but did not strain himself to look as Stiles rifled through the wardrobe. A few moments later, slick hands slid over his shoulders, leaving a cool, tingling sensation in their wake.

“What is that?” Peter asked.

Stiles began massaging the substance into Peter’s skin. His thumbs slid up the back of Peter’s neck to the base of his skull and pressed. “A salve, my lord. I asked Scott to prepare it for you.”

“Scott?”

“The new physician’s apprentice.” His thumbs dragged down between Peter’s shoulder blades, strong yet gentle as they pressed into the deepest aches. The salve seemed to sink through the skin into the muscle, then settle like ice.

Peter closed his eyes and let out a soft groan. He tried to slump forward, but surprisingly strong hands pulled him back to upright. Belated, he said, “You two seem to have become friendly. I’ve seen you together.”

“He’s a kindly person,” Stiles agreed. “I told him how you ache after your practices, and he suggested this instead of the bath. He says the heat can worsen the inflammation.”

They went quiet for a time after that, Stiles working the salve into Peter’s upper back, his shoulders, his neck. His hands slid forward, over Peter’s chest. He could feel the heat of Stiles’s body behind him, feel the breath in his chest as it rose against the back of his head. As those long fingers worked the salve into his chest muscles, they brushed over his nipples, which felt suddenly far too sensitive. Then they moved lower still, starting at his sides and following the angle of his ribs to his belly. The stretch put Stiles’s lips beside Peter’s ear, the soft puff of his breath brushing the lobe, and Peter could surely feel himself rising in his breeches.

Peter turned his head, and the hands stilled. Their lips were scarcely a hairsbreadth away. He could lean in, could capture those soft lips, could put this temptation to rest. Peter found, though, that he desperately needed for Stiles to close the distance. To choose. His lips did move, and for a golden moment, it seemed he would.

However, he said, “I apologize, my lord,” and drew away, standing up and removing his hands. “I have been too familiar.”

Peter turned in the chair, looking up at the boy beseechingly. “I don’t think so.”

Stiles’s cheeks held a flush, and from the way he held the front of his tunic out, Peter thought he was hiding his own arousal. “I have, my lord,” he insisted. “I have.” He looked toward the door, as if he might leave. That would be worse, even, than staying suspended in this temptation another day.

“I’ll nap now,” Peter told him. “Would you join me?” When Stiles looked warier still, he added, “To sleep. Join me to sleep.”

Biting his lip, Stiles took up the jar of salve where he had left it on the desk and capped it. He nodded. “To sleep, then, my lord.”

* * *

  
  


Peter had experienced his fair share of trysts and tumbles over the years. He had played about with squires and stable boys in his youth. Starting around his nineteenth year, Peter’s father had made some noise over marrying him off before he reached the age of majority (after which age Peter could do whatever he damn well pleased, and they all knew _that_ would lead to bachelorhood and male consorts). Then he went to war and such talk was forgotten.

In the war, he had found affections with knights and squires, with townsfolk in the villages they passed through. It had always been easy for him, as a prince. Perhaps therein lay his problem: no longer being a prince. Never before had he _pined_ after a man. Never before had he caught himself wondering, at all and odd hours, about the curve of a man’s neck, the slide of his tongue against his lips, the marks that dotted his fair skin.

To be sure, there had been men he found attractive who had no lust for men. Peter found little interest in those who had no interest in himself. Perhaps therein lay another problem: that Stiles so clearly did return his interest, but would not return his willingness. No, never before had Peter so lusted without sating his thirst.

The question of _why_ he found himself consumed by this affection fell second only to the question of _why_ Stiles refused to give in.

Was it, as he had implied, merely indignation toward his current position? If so, surely Peter’s unwillingness to command him to bed might put such feelings to rest.

Was it, then, shame or troubling scruples? The church frowned upon such things, but not with much more force than they frowned upon anything else. For nobles, at least, it had never been a thing of concern so long as they proved willing to spawn heirs when necessary. And Stiles himself had admitted his interest in men in so open and cheery a tone, Peter had difficulty believing that explanation.

Was it, Peter dreaded, that Stiles had another? After the salve, he thought back with anxiety on Stiles’s casual words: _He’s a kindly person_. Scott, the physician’s apprentice. Could a boy of so lowly a position truly be Peter’s rival?

Two days after the salve, he paid a visit to the apothecary, just below his own chambers. Scott stood at a table in the center of the room, wrapping bundles of herbs in cloth. He wore long robes, the sleeves rolled above his elbows baring tan, muscled arms stained with splotches of vivid blueish-purple that continued to his hands, where they were darkest. The perils of herbal preparations, Peter supposed.

“Lord Peter!” Scott greeted, his smile brilliant and toothy. “Good morning. I’m afraid Master Harris isn’t in just yet. He’s attending to a visiting noble and might be gone some time.” He had a very subtle but unusual accent that Peter couldn’t place.

“No matter,” Peter assured him as he stepped inside. “I came to speak with you, Scott. I wanted to offer my thanks for the salve you sent with Stiles. It was quite effective.”

If possible, the grin became more cheerful still. “I am pleased to hear it, my lord. I know Stiles was much concerned about your rigorous training. The salve was made of mint and leopard’s bane, to reduce inflammation and soothe aches.”

“That it did.” Peter spared a glance toward a chair, and it took Scott an embarrassingly long moment to catch his meaning.

“Oh! Please, my lord, have a seat if you like.” He didn’t pause his attentions to the herbs in his hands as he offered, “Can I get you something to drink? I’m afraid we have nothing but water on hand. Well, there’s aqua vitae, but it’s foul stuff – meant for medicine, not drinking.”

Taking the chair, Peter cut him off, assuring him, “I don’t need a drink, no.”

He glanced about the room, which he hadn’t had much occasion to visit. It looked much like the apothecary at home, the one Deaton had studied in when they were boys. Shelves lined the walls, cluttered with jars of herbs and strange liquids, all labeled in sloping script. In the corner, he saw a small cot where Scott likely slept. He couldn’t help but imagine Stiles sitting on that cot. Surely it wouldn’t hold the weight of them both.

“Can I help you with anything else, my lord?” An uncertain question.

“Where are you from?” Peter asked in return. He wanted to know more about this would-be rival. He looked at Scott, who had lifted an eyebrow. “Your accent is unusual. I’m not familiar with it.”

“Ah.” Scott nodded. “The southern coast, my lord.”

“A long way to come to apprentice here,” he noted.

Standing up a bit straighter, Scott insisted, “Master Harris is the finest, most respected physician in the kingdom. I am fortunate to have his instruction.”

“You’ve hoped for this for some time, then?” Peter presumed.

“Yes,” Scott agreed with an earnest enthusiasm that Peter, frankly, found exhausting. “For years I have dreamed to study here with him.”

Peter changed direction in his questioning. “You and Stiles seem to have become good friends.”

Scott set aside a bag of herbs and did not reach for another. Instead, his purple-stained hands wrung together, fretting. “He is a very good man, my lord. We are both new here in the castle, and it is a comfort to have a friend.”

“He seems fond of you as well,” Peter agreed. Perhaps he felt a different sort of jealousy then. He, too, was new in the castle. He had Deaton, to be sure, but no new prospects that he might call ‘friend.’ Even Stiles was too far below his station to dream of such a title.

The apprentice had stopped working entirely, and was watching Peter strangely, like a puzzle needing to be worked out. The last thing he needed was for Scott to tell Stiles that he had come barging into the apothecary in a fit of jealousy.

Peter stood. “There is one thing I should request of you and your master,” he announced, and that seemed to put Scott at ease. He supposed all sorts of men came here, delaying with talk of this or that only to ask, at the last moment, about some shameful ailment. “I have sometimes suffered from unpleasant dreams since my time at war. My physician in Triskelion used to give me a medicine that made me sleep more deeply.”

It was true enough, though the dreams hadn’t plagued him in years now, since his first return from battle. After that, he grew more accustomed to the horrors in his own mind.

Scott’s demeanor softened visibly, and Peter for a moment could only imagine him as a friendly dog that might lick a man’s face when overcome with affection. “Of course, my lord,” he replied. “We will have it prepared as soon as we are able.”

* * *

  
  


That night, Peter returned late from supper and found Stiles already curled in bed, asleep. There had been too much wine, too much sniping and cruelty from the royal family, too much rage in his belly. It settled, though, when he saw Stiles there.

A few candles still burned in the room. Peter thought he could manage his doublet on his own for once, rather than wake his bedmate. Still, he couldn’t help but carry a candle to the side of the bed that he might look on the object of his affections.

Only a sheet covered him. He slept mostly on his stomach, one arm curled under his belly and one leg hiked up high on the bed, the other stretched out long. A strange dark shape marred the back of his neck, low but bared by his too-large nightshirt. Peter squinted in the dim light. Setting one knee gently on the bed, he brought the candle closer.

There, on the back of his neck, was a blue-purple stain, shaped like fingers.

All of the horrid feelings from dinner came rushing back, now paired with a fiery jealousy and an unjustified sense of betrayal. That stain – that terrible stain – matched that on Scott’s hands exactly.

Peter set the candle aside and barked, “Get up.” When the boy didn’t wake, he went to the end of the bed and yanked the sheets off. “I said, wake up!” he snapped.

This time, Stiles blinked awake, frowning and sleep-addled. “My lord?”

“I need help out of this doublet,” Peter told him. “Come on, then. You can sleep when I can.”

* * *

  
  


At just two weeks until his sister’s wedding, the residents of Eastfall talked of little else. A ride to Triskelion took perhaps four days for an experienced rider with a good horse. For an entire royal party, however, they required more than a week. A celebratory feast had been planned a few days in advance of their journey.

They gathered in the grand banquet hall, the tables arranged in a ‘C’ shape. Peter had not won himself a seat at the high table, but sat only two chairs down on the queen’s side table. Servants darted about in the center between the tables, filling wine goblets and setting out heaping trays of fish and meats and vegetables. Peter spied a platter of what looked to be duck nearby and thanked god he could sate himself, for once, of something that hadn’t come from the sea.

“A toast!” Deucalion called in a booming voice, standing with his goblet raised. Everyone else rose in response, holding their own wine aloft. “In two short weeks, I shall see my eldest son married. This is not only a fitting match of proud, royal lineage, but shall be a day of peace. A day to, at long last, put to rest this senseless bloodshed that has plagued the borderlands for near a decade.”

His expression went grim as his gaze swept over the hall. It landed perhaps too long on Peter. “It is not enough to win a war by blade,” he said, softer now. “For blades may always rise again.” Then, resuming his bellowing, he called, “To Prince Ennis and Princess Talia!” He took a hearty drink, the wine leaving his upper lip stained a gruesome purple.

Peter mumbled his way through the responding clamor of toasting. He took a longer drink than most, he thought, then sat and went about filling his plate. He had scarcely taken a bite of his duck when a loud clatter sounded at the high table.

Servants rushed in with cloths to clean the spill, but Peter’s eyes fixed on Deucalion, who lurched backward from the table. “I can’t…” he gasped. His words came slurred. “I can’ see. I’ve...” His face had gone a vivid red.

Beside him, Queen Kali gasped, “He’s been poisoned! Call for Master Harris!”

Peter watched as Deucalion’s dilated eyes rolled backward in his head, and he toppled out of his chair. Even after rising to his feet, as much of the hall had, he could only just see the king behind the table, caught in spasm as the queen and princes rushed to crouch beside him. Princess Jennifer stood to the side, a hand clasped over her mouth.

Scott rushed in, pushing past the crowd and kneeling at the king’s head. Straining to hear over the clamor of voices in the hall, Peter stepped closer and was able to catch, “Deadly nightshade. I would know it anywhere.” The twins held the king’s writhing body still while Scott tipped a bottle of brown liquid against his lips. After what seemed an eternity, the spasms ceased and the flush seemed to settle from his face.

“My sons,” Kali said, “Bring him to his chambers at once and keep watch over him until I return. Bring your sister with you.”

The princes lifted Deucalion from the floor, and guards rushed in to assist as they carried him from the room, Jennifer trailing after.

Then Kali stood and turned, her ferocious gaze fixing pointedly upon Peter. “You,” she growled. “You did this. Guards, seize him!”

Peter gaped in shock, looking around himself as if she might be talking to some other poor fool behind him. But, no, the guards were coming upon him, grasping him by either arm. “Your majesty,” he protested. “I swear I had nothing to do with this. I would not even know the poison given to him if I saw it.”

“Take him to his chambers,” she ordered the guards, “and bring -” She turned and looked behind her. “Where did the boy go? The one that saved the king?”

But Scott had vanished from the room. A guard offered, “Perhaps to continue his care, your majesty?”

“Then fetch Master Harris,” she ordered. “And seize his manservant, the one he brought from Triskelion. You are to search his chambers for this poison, which Master Harris will identify.”

The guards stayed close at Peter’s back for the march to his chambers, Kali bringing up the rear. Stiles stood on the steps to the bedchamber as they entered, fully dressed, thank god. He also did nothing so foolish as to open his mouth and ask what was going on. They all stood in silence, waiting, until Deaton and Harris were brought through the door. Deaton they shoved to stand beside Peter, a grave look on his face. Harris they ushered to the queen.

“Master Harris,” Kali said, “as you by now may already know, an attempt was made tonight upon our king’s life. The assailant used deadly nightshade. Describe the poison that the guards might search for it here.”

Harris, by the look of it, had not already known and had perhaps been at the drink. He had the squinting look of a man with poor eyesight, and his robes had been pulled on hastily, the belt hanging loose about his waist. “Dea – um – deadly nightshade? Your majesty?” She did not look amused by his fluster. “Right. Well, the poison is derived of a berry, round and smooth and black in color.”

The queen made a gesture to the guards, and they began tearing through Peter’s things with, it seemed, as much destruction as they could manage. Peter closed his eyes, unable to bear the sight as his books were thrown about, his mail discarded noisily on the floor.

He heard boots on the stairs to his bedchamber and opened his eyes to see Stiles shoved toward himself and Deaton. Peter placed a hand on Stiles’s shoulder and squeezed. “It’s alright,” he said under his breath. “Nothing to worry about.” Stiles’s expression stayed guarded, tense.

Upstairs, a victorious cheer rang out. A guard came downstairs with both palms cupped in front of himself. “Here it is, your majesty,” he said. Peter looked to Deaton, who shook his head once. He had not been in possession of such a thing.

Kali peered into the guard’s hands, then stepped back and gestured for Harris. “Are these the berries?” At Harris’s nervous expression, she added, “Master Harris, I need not remind you: you have served our family less than a year and have not won enough good will to forgive an error in such a moment.”

Less than a year?

Harris pushed the guard’s arms lower that he might see better from afar. From where he stood, Peter saw a sprig of black berries. “Yes, your majesty. That’s deadly nightshade.”

Peter cut in before this madness could go any farther. “Your majesty, those are not mine. I know not how they came to be in my chambers. I swear it.”

Kali laughed, a cruel sound. “Lord Peter, we have caught you red-hand.”

It was Deaton who broke in then, a bit too loud in his panic as he cried, “But they aren’t!”

The queen looked at him, outraged that a servant would dare speak to her in such a manner.

“Your majesty,” he quickly amended. “If I might speak a word on my lord’s defense. Please. I studied under our physician at Triskelion in my youth, and I know of such ingredients.”

“I should take this information as further evidence,” she replied. “Why would a manservant study with a physician and yet be a manservant?”

Deaton ducked his head. “At the time, I had to choose between continuing my studies and continuing my service to the then-Prince Peter. With all due respect to my lord, I made what was then a smart political choice which has since served me rather poorly.”

Despite the threat of their predicament, Peter nearly laughed, covering it with a cough and shooting Deaton a warning look. Now was not the time for humor.

“Fine, then,” Kali snapped, impatient. “What wisdom have you to impart upon us that our own court physician does not know?”

Deaton went to the guard with the poison. “Your majesty, sirs: the nightshade berry, in addition to being a potent poison, is also sometimes used in the preparation of dye for clothing. If I may demonstrate?” He held up his hands to show his palms, turning so all could see. “My hands are quite clean, you see. However, if I take one of these berries...”

He plucked one from the sprig and placed it in his open palm. Gently, he pressed down on it with his thumb until it burst, little bits of juice spitting to the sides. He lifted the squashed berry out of his palm and showed it again to the room. There, in the center of his palm, was a vivid blue-purple stain.

“You see, it stains the skin most noticeably, and the mark persists for several days despite washing. Even if one wore gloves, the stain would surely have splattered somewhere on the assailant’s person, either on his clothes or arms. Inspect Lord Peter’s hands and arms. Inspect his laundry. You will find no stains from the nightshade berry.”

Peter lifted his hands for them all to see, turning them, then pushing back his sleeves that they might see his arms.

“Master Harris, is this claim true?” Kali asked.

“Ah, yes – yes, your majesty. It would be quite difficult to remove such stains.”

Kali frowned, peering at Peter suspiciously. “Then how do you explain the berries in your chambers?”

“Someone meant for me to be blamed for his own misdeed,” Peter answered without hesitation.

Her expression did not soften, but it moved from Peter to his left, to Stiles. “Boy, show me your hands,” she ordered.

Stiles stumbled forward at once, holding his hands out for her to see. Peter’s gaze fell on the back of his neck, where the stain from Scott’s touch barely peeked out of the top of his collar. Peter’s heart lurched in his chest. Grabbing Stiles by the back of the neck, so his hand covered the stain, he pulled him back again. He did not know if there might be stains on Stiles’s forearms, but he did know who might yet save him from accusation.

“Your majesty, I think I know who is to blame,” he declared. He looked to Harris, who shifted uneasily on his feet, squinting at the ground in front of him. “Master Harris’s apprentice, Scott. I saw him with purple-stained hands just days ago. What’s more, when I asked after his position in the castle, he claimed he had wished for years to come study under Master Harris at Eastfall. Only now I learn that Master Harris is new in the castle as well. I believe he must have been sent here as an assassin.”

“Scott?” Harris asked, incredulous. “Why he -” He stopped and lifted a hand to his lips. “Perhaps his hands did look discolored...”

“The boy that saved the king’s life?” Kali demanded. “He gave him the antidote!”

“Exactly,” Deaton said. From the twitch of his cheek, Peter could tell he wanted to smile. “Master Harris, what is the antidote for deadly nightshade?” he asked.

“Ah, well, the – the calabar bean,” Harris stammered.

“Which grows deep in the heart of the Southlands beyond the sea, I believe,” Deaton reminded him. “Tell me, do you have such a rare and difficult ingredient in your stores? And would you have it prepared and ready for use as an antidote?”

“Why…” Harris turned to Kali. “No, your majesty. I did not have calabar bean in my stores. There is no reason the boy should have had it unless he knew the poison had been prepared. And perhaps he had a change of heart after seeing the king fall.”

Kali fixed Harris with a deadly glare. “Whatever the reason, we shall soon find out.” She turned to her guards. “Find him! Arrest him!”

The guards rushed to the door, Harris and Kali after them. Once the clatter down the steps had finished, the three of them, left behind, let out their breaths in unison.

“This is not good,” Deaton said. “They will say he is an assassin sent from your father.”

Peter went to him and held Deaton by both shoulders. “My friend, I owe you a great debt of gratitude. Were it not for your wit, I might be in the dungeon already.”

Deaton looked over his shoulder, perhaps surprised that Peter would show such affection in front of Stiles, but did not comment. “I have sworn to protect you,” he replied. “From that, I shall never waver.”

Heedless of how it might look, he drew Deaton into a tight hug. When he pulled back, Peter said, “I am afraid I must ask something else of you tonight. Please, keep abreast of these events as they unfold. I should not like to be surprised further before this is done.”

Deaton nodded. “I will do what I can, my lord.”

On his departure, Peter closed the door. He went to the couch and dropped heavily onto it. Stiles sat beside him, quiet, and Peter felt a bubble of rage rise in his throat. Grabbing the back of his collar, he yanked it down. “You have a stain on the back of your neck, Stiles,” he said. “I suspect from the assassin’s touch.”

Stiles turned to him, wide-eyed, and clapped a hand over the spot. “My lord,” he protested.

“I don’t care if you were sleeping with him,” Peter said, though it was a dirty lie. “But tell me now and tell me true: Did you have any knowledge of his plan?”

Stiles gaped at him for a moment, then shook his head. “No,” he whispered. “No, I swear it.”

Peter knew his judgment was clouded, but Stiles seemed earnest, even startled at the accusation. He released his grasp.

“And, my lord, I didn’t… he grasped my neck in a friendly manner,” Stiles told him. “Nothing more. You can check – there are no other marks on my body, I swear.”

Taking one of Stiles’s arms in hand, Peter lifted his sleeves, finding only pale, freckled flesh. “I feared they might have found more here,” he explained, then checked the other.

He looked up to find Stiles staring at him with a curious expression. “My lord, you thought I had betrayed you,” he said. “That I had made to pin a murder upon you.”

“I apologize,” Peter said, ducking his head. “I see now my suspicions were unwarranted.”

“Even in that suspicion, you chose to protect me,” Stiles continued in the same tone.

Soft fingers pressed beneath Peter’s chin, lifting it so they were eye-to-eye once more. A smile had settled upon Stiles’s pink lips. Peter scarcely dared to hope at what was to come, not until the moment those lips touched his own. They moved cautiously at first, simply pressing close that they might share breath. Then, by increments, they parted, bidding Peter inside.

After he had enjoyed a brief taste of the sweet wetness of Stiles’s mouth, Peter pulled back and asked, “Are you sure?” for he didn’t think he could stand to taste and not to have.

Stiles nodded, smiling wider. “Yes.” He kissed Peter again. “Yes, I’m sure now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You get porn next chapter! Glorious, glorious porn! You've all been very patient and you deserve it!


	4. The Lover

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peter and Stiles give in to their romance at last, but the threat of Eastfall's retaliation against Triskelion looms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note - I've added a couple of tags! There are also some vague references to medieval-style nastiness here, but nothing graphic.

Stiles’s honeyed eyes tracked the movement of his finger as it brushed across Peter’s brow. His lips lay parted, loose but with a smile curled in the corners. “I haven’t seen you like this before,” he said.

“Like what?”

They lay on their sides, legs tangled together, the morning light slanting through the stained glass and casting a yellowed haze across the bed. “You have...” Stiles leaned forward and pressed his lips to Peter’s hairline. “...the most tender expression on your face.”

Peter caught those lips with his own. “Perhaps you make me tender.” He pressed Stiles onto his back and moved over him. “Perhaps you make a poet of me.”

Grinning, Stiles hooked his bare legs around Peter’s thighs. “The prince that became a poet,” he mused. “It has a certain appeal to it. Would you write poems for me?”

“ _For_ you?” He dragged a thumb over Stiles’s cheekbone to the lobe of his ear. “Darling, I would write poems _about_ you. I would compare your lip to the petal of a rose, wet with dew.” He bent down to kiss at those petals, to taste their dew.

Stiles hummed. “Dew will only last a morning,” he replied without drawing back. “Shall my charms be dried out by midday?”

Peter laughed against his mouth, then pulled away to shake his head. “Heavens, no. For next I would write an ode...” He dragged his gaze down Stiles’s face and neck, landing on the dip just below. “…why, an ode to your collar, to its graceful shape, like the curve of a bow.” He bent to press more kisses along its length, and Stiles arched to give him room.

Around a gasp, Stiles breathed, “A bow that I might release arrows?”

His chin resting against Stiles’s breastbone, Peter looked up to see Stiles gazing back at him. “The arrows of Eros, god of love,” he suggested.

Stiles narrowed his eyes in challenge. “The arrows of Artemis, goddess of the hunt.”

“Goddess of the moon also,” Peter replied, slipping lower to press his lips to Stiles’s belly. “Fitting, for in my next poem, I would tell the moon that her night sky had got it wrong. That its colors should be inverse that they might compete with the beauty...” He dragged his tongue down from Stiles’s navel, detouring to kiss a mole on his hip. “...of your white velvet skin, bejeweled with dark constellations.”

He could feel muscles quivering below his lips, the firm warmth of Stiles’s length pressing into his chest. “It sounds lovely,” Stiles murmured. “Shall I fetch you a quill?”

At last, Peter pressed his lips to the head of Stiles’s cock. “You can fetch me some oil,” he suggested.

With a flush on his cheeks, his lover parted his legs and said, “I think… I think I’m slick enough still.”

“Are you?” Peter asked curiously, slipping a thumb below to tease at his breach, sure enough slick with the evidence of their night’s activities. It pressed easily inside, winning him a breathless moan. “Why, it seems some scoundrel must have kept at you all night for you to be so sweet and loose for me now,” Peter teased as he pressed deeper and curled the digit.

Stiles cried out and bore down against him. The heel of one foot knocked into Peter’s side. “Coxcomb,” he accused. “Is it not enough to enjoy your conquest with quiet dignity?”

Peter sucked at the base of Stiles’s cock, enjoying another long moan before he replied, “Why should I? Your enjoying of my conquest is neither quiet nor dignified.”

Laughing despite his attempts at irritation, Stiles dragged his fingers through Peter’s hair. “Either put your mouth to better use or fuck me already,” he ordered.

“You forget all courtesy in your pleasure,” Peter scolded, switching out his thumb for two fingers.

On the end of a quivering hum, Stiles replied, “That I might receive the courtesy of pleasure.”

Peter moved back up, holding himself over Stiles with an arm braced on the bed. “I should put you in your place.”

Stiles gripped his face in both hands, drawing him down for a hungry kiss. When they parted for breath, he said, “I’m in my place.”

“That you are,” Peter agreed, feeling wild in a way he couldn’t remember feeling before. He pulled back and hoisted Stiles’s hips higher, tucking a pillow beneath them. Before Stiles could even manage to utter a plea for it, Peter was in him again, groaning at the sweet relief of his warmth. For a long moment, he stayed still, their gazes locked, both of them panting softly. Stiles’s legs locked around his hips, heels digging in at the back of his thighs, keeping him close.

The previous night, Peter had spent long hours exploring Stiles’s body, mapping and memorizing his reactions to every touch. A century might not have been enough to learn his pleasure properly, to give it to him the way he deserved, but Peter felt more than willing to make the effort.

He rolled his hips in the short, quick thrusts that Stiles seemed to favor, taking him rough and eager until his muscles strained with the effort.

“Peter,” Stiles gasped, the name bursting from his lips like it had fought its way to the surface. Stiles had never called him by his given name before the previous night, in the frenzy of his passion. Now, if ever he said it in a less intimate context, Peter would surely tent his breeches reflexively. Stiles had one hand twisted in the sheets above his head, the other gripping tight at Peter’s straining arm. “Yes, yes, it’s perfect,” he urged, a ceaseless babble of encouragements ensuing. Then, before long, cried, “Don’t stop. Please don’t -”

He had done this the night before, all talk until at once the capacity of speech seemed to leave him. His mouth hung open, slack. His eyes squeezed shut, a furrow of concentration between his brows. He needed more, was smoldering with heat but unable to ignite. Peter could not get a hand around him without losing the angle by the hold on his hip, and Stiles seemed to have forgotten that _he_ had two free hands with which to give himself the needed spark.

Bowing his head, Peter licked at a pebbled nipple, feeling the answering moan against his lips. He caught it between his teeth. Stiles cried out, “Peter!” and, finally, gave up his grip on the sheets to wrap a hand around himself, quick, short movements. His back arched with a long groan as he spilled between them. His muscles clenched around Peter in the most beautiful, torturous ways.

Peter released his hold on Stiles’s hip, let his weight settle onto him, face tucked against Stiles’s neck. He rolled his hips in lazy, mindless jerks until he, too, crossed the threshold to release.

They lay together like that in silence, Stiles’s fingers tracing unseen patterns over Peter’s sweat-slick back, until the pulse Peter heard, his ear to Stiles’s chest, had settled. Then, his voice rumbling through his chest, Stiles recited in a dreamy tone,

“ _Hearken these few, simple wishes I ask,  
As here in sweet, blissful coition we bask:  
That th_ _y_ _embrace should always be steadfast,  
That thy kisses should never become chast,  
__And t_ _hat someday, oh -  
__That s_ _omeday_ _thou_ _move_ _st_ _thine_ _cock from my ass.”_

Peter burst into laughter so forceful that he did, in fact, slip free. Rolling off and onto his back, he asked, “Did you make that up?”

“Was it any good?”

“Terrible.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Stiles grinning. “Well, then, no. I must have heard it somewhere.”

“Perhaps we best leave poetry to the professionals,” Peter suggested.

A knock at the door interrupted them. “My lord, it’s Deaton.”

“Just a moment!” Peter called, sitting up. Stiles was an absolute mess and would take too long to tidy up to any level of respectability, so he simply pulled the sheet from the bottom of the bed to cover them both to the waist. Stiles sat up and blushed but did not protest for a less feeble attempt at modesty. Peter turned back toward the door. “Come in!”

From the lack of surprise on his face, Deaton had overheard their activities from the solar, either moments ago or the night before, perhaps both. “My lord, I apologize for interrupting, but you did ask that I keep you apprised of the events surrounding the attempt on the king’s life,” he said, words perfectly respectful to a casual observer but dripping with judgment in the ears of one who knew him well. Peter knew it was probably reckless to allow himself such distraction in the wake of the previous night’s events, but he trusted Deaton to keep him safe regardless.

“Of course,” he agreed. “Come, tell us what you’ve learned.”

Deaton’s gaze shifted purposefully from Peter to Stiles.

Peter’s first instinct was to protest that they could trust Stiles, but he knew better than that, and Deaton would remind him of that in an instant. “Right.” He sighed and slipped from bed. His manservant had seen him in far more compromising situations than this. “Let me put something on.”

He gave himself a careless scrub at the washbasin, then found breeches and a jacket. “Stiles, darling,” he said as he tugged them on, “take your time cleaning up while Deaton and I talk in the solar. Try to keep your ear off the floor if you can.”

“Still so mistrustful,” Stiles teased. He leaned back on his hands, the sheet settled at his waist to reveal a smear of his spend on his stomach. “We should hate for your manservant to say you’re thinking with your cock.”

Peter replied with mock sweetness, “Oh, no, sweetheart. My concern is that my manservant should think you offered your virtue in exchange for secrets.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “I’ve got my virtue right here,” he muttered, and bit his thumb at Peter.

That riled Deaton, who took a few menacing steps forward, saying, “Now, you listen here -”

“Deaton, it’s fine,” Peter assured him with a laugh. “He’s either so distressed at my leaving that he’s taken leave of his senses or I’ve fucked them out of him. In either case, I can take it as a compliment.” He winked at Stiles as he made for the door.

“Coxcomb!” Stiles called after him.

Once they had settled at the dining table in the solar, Deaton fixed Peter with a look that could dry a well. “Should I waste my breath cautioning you?” he asked.

“It’s not what you think,” Peter insisted.

“No?” Deaton leaned forward, folding his arms on the table. “He did not suddenly change heart the very night his friend attempted a murder which you were accused of, with evidence found in the bedchamber you both share?”

“I asked him about it.”

“Oh, well, if he told you he’s innocent...” Deaton scoffed.

“He had the stain on his neck,” Peter cut in. “I thought it meant at least that he and Scott were lovers, but perhaps that he was party to the crime. I asked after you left, and he was earnest. The stain was from a friendly touch only, and he had no knowledge of the plot.”

Deaton stared at him for a long moment, jaw tight. The darkness under his eyes suggested a night of little sleep. He sighed. “I have not known you before to lose your edge over a lover.” He spoke slowly, patiently. “But I also have not known you before to take a lover not only in lust but in affection. Peter, as your friend, I beg that you keep your prudence. Love has ways of clouding the mind.”

Peter shook his head. “If your concern is for matters of love, you can lay it to rest. I am not so foolish as to fall in love.” Uneasy about this line of inquiry, he diverted them: “Now, tell me what occurred since last night.”

Deaton sat up straighter, smoothing a hand over the front of his doublet. “The king’s condition is poor. As of this morning, he is unable to see, and Master Harris does not know if his sight will return. The guards were unable to apprehend the apprentice. It seems he fled the castle somehow, immediately after saving the king’s life.”

That meant the assassin could not be questioned as to who gave his orders. “Are they blaming Triskelion yet?” he asked.

“I have not been able to glean as much,” Deaton answered, “but I suspect it.”

“We should warn them.”

“I took the liberty of dispatching our messenger in the early morning.” Deaton’s voice dropped lower at that. That they were able to communicate with Triskelion was their most valuable secret at the moment. “I worry that there may be more valuable information in the next few days, which he will be unable to deliver, but...”

Peter nodded. “You made the right choice. They need to know.” He could not guess if or how or when Kali’s reprisal would come. Now, at least, Talia and his father would guard themselves for it.

In the heavy silence of the solar, they both pieced through the possible outcomes of their situation. Though neither voiced his thoughts, their eyes met, and Peter could see they had found similar conclusions.

Things were about to get very ugly.

* * *

  
  


Over the next three days, Peter found relief from his anxieties in Stiles and in his training. He spent time at little else, save hushed conversations with Deaton. There had been no formal suppers since the king’s poisoning, no invitations for tea. He spied Princess Jennifer that afternoon from across a courtyard on his way to the training yard, and she fixed him with a glare so malicious, it was a wonder that her eyes had stayed in her head.

When he returned to his quarters afterward, sweaty but uninjured, Stiles had not yet returned for the afternoon. With Scott gone, Peter had no idea where he might be. By the time Stiles did return to the bedchamber, Peter had shed his mail and put it away, cleaned up at the washbasin, and changed into a light tunic for resting.

“This heat will not relent,” Stiles greeted with a quick peck of the lips.

Peter caught him around the waist, holding him close to steal a longer kiss. He hummed against Stiles’s mouth. “Where have you been off to, then?” he asked.

Stiles rubbed a hand over the side of Peter’s neck. “Sowing discord,” he answered easily.

“What sort of discord?” Peter pressed, trying for teasing but perhaps a bit too earnest.

Studying his face curiously, Stiles said, “Are you asking if I’ve been spying?” Peter nearly scrambled to excuse his mistrust, but Stiles went on: “Perhaps lurking after you to the training yard to watch you sweat and labor in all your…” He placed a finger at the hollow of Peter’s neck and traced it downward. “... _virility_.” His lower lip caught between his teeth as he let his eyes roam down, then back to Peter’s eyes. “Is that what you’re asking?”

Peter swallowed heavily. “If I wasn’t, apparently I should be.”

Stiles laughed and kissed his jaw. “It is hot, my lord,” he said. He only bothered with the formality as a tease now, to rile Peter up. “And it is midday. Sensible persons should be in bed.”

Letting his hand slip lower to grip Stiles’s buttock, Peter murmured, “We shouldn’t want anyone to accuse us of being senseless.” He squeezed once, then put both hands to work undoing Stiles’s belt.

“Funny,” Stiles commented as it slipped free and fell to the floor. He tugged his tunic from the back as Peter lifted from the bottom.

“What is?”

Bare from the waist up, Stiles pressed close again. “That you should make so much fuss over being undressed by your servants, but once lust is involved, you’re able to do the job for us both.”

Peter urged him backward until he hit the edge of the desk, then lifted him onto it. “Proper motivation does wonders for the acquisition of new skills.” He knelt in front of Stiles and rolled up one leg of his long breeches to expose a garter. As he tugged loose the tie, Peter pressed his lips to the inside of Stiles’s knee.

While working at the other, he said, “I know this is the style for servants, but I think it might be enjoyable, to see you dressed in something of mine. A short doublet that bares the shape of your legs.” He rolled down Stiles’s linen stockings and set them aside.

When he looked up, he saw Stiles struggling not to squirm, a bulge in his breeches disclosing his eagerness. “Perhaps I enjoy the servants’ style,” he protested. “Perhaps we servants find the fashions of nobles absurd.”

Peter stood, moving between Stiles’s thighs and running a thumb over the strained laces of his breeches. “Do you?” he asked.

Stiles slipped an impudent hand under Peter’s tunic, grinning when he found no fabric beneath. “Well, I do like you better not encumbered by fashion.”

Their mouths met in a rough tangle of urgency, both seeming satisfied with as much teasing as they had already endured. Peter yanked at the laces of Stiles’s breeches until they were loose enough that he could slide the clothing off.

“Would you take me here?” Stiles asked, breathless. “On the desk?”

Peter shucked his tunic and cast it to the ground with the rest. “Is that what you want? To leave traces of our coupling on all the furniture in my quarters?” They had already defiled the couch and bathtub in the solar.

Stiles nipped at Peter’s chest hair, laved a tongue over his nipple. “What better way to thank the king for his hospitality?”

That set a flare of heat through Peter. He tipped Stiles onto his back and hooked a hand under each of his thighs. Pressing them up toward his chest and out to his sides, he looked down where his hardened cock slid against his lover’s entrance. “Hold your legs,” he ordered.

Once his instructions had been obeyed, Peter stepped back to take him in. He looked lewd, exposed as he was. Stiles licked his lips as he stared up at Peter, then glanced toward the door, which he had left open. Any poor, unsuspecting chambermaid might wander in and find him like that. Still, he did not move, only murmured, “Peter, please.”

“Just a moment, my darling.” Peter went to the cabinet at the bedside to retrieve the bottle of oil they had been working their way through. With it in hand, he returned to the desk and uncorked it. “I want you to stay just like this,” he told Stiles. He slid a hand over the curve of his ass, over his bollocks to his swollen cock, stroking just lightly. “Do you want my fingers?”

Stiles nodded, flushed from his cheeks to his chest. “Yes.”

Peter tipped the oil over the top of Stiles’s entrance, catching the drippings on two fingers. He worked the oil inside, first with one finger, then the other, then both. When he looked up, Stiles met his gaze with a lusty stare, lips parted.

“More,” he said. “I want more.”

Not one to deny such a request, Peter slid his fingers in to the knuckle and twisted them until Stiles cried out and arched off the desk. “More?” Peter asked, pulling his fingers almost completely out, then driving them in again. “Still more you want, you greedy, perfect wight?” His other hand wrapped loosely around Stiles’s cock, pinning it to his stomach. His own hung heavy between his legs, aching for the tight clench that held his fingers.

Stiles’s knuckles went pale where he gripped his legs below the knees. “Please,” he groaned. “Peter, please, yes.”

Peter fucked him, rough, with two fingers, wringing wanton noises from his lips, then worked in a third.

Toes curling, Stiles warned, “Too close, Peter.”

“You’re just as close as I want you,” Peter insisted, though he removed his hand from Stiles’s cock. He felt feverish in the summer heat, the warmth of Stiles’s body clenched around his fingers radiating through him, beckoning him in. He poured more oil onto his fingers, worked it in, then withdrew them.

“Let me turn over,” Stiles said. “I want to press back onto you while you fuck me.”

Peter leaned over him and kissed him, brief but wet. “Since you ask so nicely,” he agreed. He pried Stiles’s fingers loose from where they held his legs, then stepped back to help him move. With Stiles bent over the edge of the desk, legs spread, chest against its surface, Peter needed only to step up behind him and guide the head of his cock to his hole. “Is this what you want?”

Stiles looked over his shoulder and smirked. “You’re what I want,” he replied. “And as that is an ample portion of you, I want it an ample amount.”

Pressing into him, Peter groaned, “How is it you make a lecture even of flattery?” He kissed Stiles’s shoulder, tracing a line of freckles with his tongue to distract himself from the maddening clench of him. He stopped with his hips pressed flush, seated fully inside that tight heat, panting against the knobs of Stiles’s spine.

“Move back a bit,” Stiles requested. Once Peter had done so, Stiles pressed up onto one elbow, the other hand curled around the edge of the desk. He rocked back onto Peter’s cock in a slow, purposeful movement that stuttered with a gasp at the deepest. His back arched beautifully, and then he repeated the motion more confidently, using Peter for his pleasure.

“Look at you,” Peter praised, stroking a hand over the dip of his back. “You’re perfect.” He rolled his hips to match Stiles’s motions, but let him do most of the work, as he seemed intent to do.

Stiles dropped his head to rest on his forearm as his pace quickened, rough moans spilling from his lips. “Peter, you feel so…” he breathed. “I’m so full of you.”

His movements began to stutter, and Peter slipped a hand beneath where his cock hung, hard and leaking. “It’s alright, darling,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.” His other hand gripped Stiles by the shoulder, holding him steady as he snapped his hips in harsh, quick motions.

Stiles’s words dried up, then, only his ragged breathing audible over the sounds of their coupling. His face turned to the side so he could stare up at Peter, eye unfocused and face flushed red. As close as Peter felt to his own completion, pressure and pleasure coiling low in his gut, he could not tear his attention from that desperate expression. Stiles in ecstasy was the most magnificent thing he had ever beheld. When he came, his mouth opened wide, silent. He shivered and clenched.

Peter felt half mad as he drove into him, eyes fixed on the now-loose curve of his body, the way he yielded to each thrust. His pleasure crested, and he stilled, held tight in Stiles’s body, their gazes locked.

* * *

  
  


Later, they sat curled together on the couch, Stiles reading to him in a dreamy tone,

“ _There was feast splendid  
I cannot now tell all the fare,  
But the richest feast in the land.  
It was not long after that  
That to Floris tiding came -”_

“I’m afraid I must interrupt,” came Deaton’s soft voice from the doorway.

Peter looked up, about to make some glib comment about his penchant for doing so. The dire look on his friend’s face quelled the jest before it could form. “Deaton, what’s happened?”

Deaton spared a glance for Stiles, but seemed too weary to insist he leave. His hands folded in front of him, the slouch of his shoulders uncharacteristic. He looked hollowed out. “Word has… come to me,” he said, clearly choosing his words carefully. “They’re retaliating, for the attempt on the king’s life.”

“They don’t know who gave the order,” Peter protested.

“The king is unwell. He has lost his sight, and he is enraged,” Deaton explained, bleak. “He has sent orders to Triskelion to kill your father before the wedding.”

The words fell on his ears unnaturally slowly, sinking into him like a porous stone into a river, which has not yet decided if it should sink or float. Peter could hear his own pulse hammering in his ears, but the beats seemed too far apart. The moment stretched on longer than it should have. It had to, Peter would later reason, because his whole world had to reshape itself in just that one moment.

Stiles, he realized belatedly, had shifted away from him, was staring. Peter heard his own words, but did not remember deciding to speak them: “Is there anything…? Can we…?” But they had already dispatched their messenger to Triskelion the night of the poisoning. He would not return to Eastfall for perhaps another week, and would then need four more days to return with a warning.

Deaton shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do.”

* * *

  
  


“Three years after the last war broke out between Triskelion and Eastfall, the Argents rebelled in the north.” Peter sat in the window of his bedchamber, one of the few which opened, staring down into the courtyard below. “My men and I had only just returned from battle in the borderlands, and we had taken heavy losses. As we were too ragged to take on the rebellion, my father dispatched my brother-in-law, David.”

Stiles watched him from the bed, covered only by a sheet. “Talia’s husband?”

Peter nodded. “I liked David. He and Talia married when I was still a boy, and he felt a bit like a second father to me. He was a diplomat, though, more than a warrior."

Tipping his head back against the wall of the alcove, Peter peered upward at the stormy gray skies that had plagued them all morning. They hung heavy with rain but did not seem willing to loose their fury. “It’s mountainous terrain in the north. Slow going and treacherous. Two weeks after our forces left, a solitary rider returned to report that David had been slain in the first assault.”

“I remember thinking how strange it was that David had been dead a week before we learned of it. My sister and her children had been going on about their lives as usual, worrying whether my niece Cora should be allowed to practice at the sword. All that time, their lives had been shattered, and they didn’t even know it.”

* * *

  
  


Peter lay on the couch with his head in Stiles’s lap, eyes closed as his lover petted his hair. “I know not why this torments me so,” he huffed. “Perhaps simply the agony of anticipation.”

“Not the agony of losing your father?”

With a bitter laugh, Peter opened his eyes. The gaze that looked down upon him was soft, patient. “My father and I...” He chewed his lip as he contemplated how to explain. “My father was never warm with me.” Peter glanced to the side, eyes scanning the solar idly. “I don’t think he was ever warm with anyone – not even my mother.”

“What was she like?” Stiles asked.

Peter thought on that, closed his eyes again to conjure an image of the woman. In his mind, she stood in in her nightgown, leaned against the wall while a servant rushed to help her. “She died when I was still young,” he explained. “She was unwell – fell ill easily and recovered slowly. They say her condition was not so severe before she bore Talia, as if some of her strength had gone into her baby. The physicians advised that she might not survive another child, but...” He sighed. “My father wanted his heir."

“They say she lost several babies unborn. One she bore too early, and it died in days. Then, after more than ten years of agony, she bore me. I was probably her death knell.”

A hand smoothed over his chest, slipping under his tunic to press above his heart. “I’m sure she loved you,” Stiles whispered.

“Perhaps,” Peter said. “But I remember her like a ghost, haunting the halls of my home. Nothing but a shadow on the wall.”

Something wet hit his cheek, and when he looked up, he saw Stiles weeping, silent tears rolling down his face.

Peter sat up and turned to wipe away the wetness. “Darling, don’t cry for me,” he pleaded.

“It’s just...” Stiles’s voice caught, and he pressed the back of his hand to his lips to muffle himself. He lowered it and continued, “I think maybe you and I are not so different.”

* * *

  
  


Deaton roused him in the dead of night, a candle held in one hand, the finger of the other pressed to his lips. He jerked his head toward the door. Peter found his nightshirt at the foot of the bed, where he and Stiles had discarded it. He donned it and followed downstairs to the solar.

A week had passed since Deaton told him of the plans to have his father killed, and no news had yet arrived of the outcome. Not until tonight, he suspected.

In the dim light of the solar, he saw that Deaton wore a riding cape and boots. His friend brought him a robe from the wardrobe. It was a bit too warm, but would cover his nightclothes.

Together, they descended the tower past the usual halls. Down, down into the cellars below. They stopped in the buttery, about as far from prying ears as one could get in this damned castle.

“The news isn’t good, is it?” Peter supposed. The only reason for them to be so remote was if Deaton thought he would be unable to contain his reactions.

“Your father is dead,” Deaton said, his face solemn in the candlelight.

The words stung, but Peter bore them without response.

“When they attacked him...” Deaton cleared his throat and set his candle on a table. “Your sister attempted to defend him. She fought for his life.” He kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “She was killed.”

At first, Peter did not understand. He couldn’t make the information fit into his head. “No,” he said. “No, there’s been a mistake. Your messenger has misinformed you.” He began to pace. “Ennis would not allow Talia to die – they were betrothed. She was his path to the throne. Without her, Derek will inherit the throne.”

“They took care of that as well.”

It felt like he had been run through, like an arrow had pierced his chest and taken all of the air with it. “Deaton.” He turned to face him once more. He saw tears on his friend’s otherwise stony face. “No. _No._ Deaton, tell me you’re lying,” Peter begged, a sob building in his chest. “Please, tell me my family is not dead.”

Deaton sniffed. In a way, they had been his family, too. “Derek fled the castle after Talia was killed,” he said. “They chased him down and shot him with an arrow. He fell into the Martin River and was lost.”

Peter clapped a hand over his mouth to muffle the roar of emotion that burst from it. He fell into a crouch, sobbing in loss, in helplessness, in rage. They had slaughtered his family.

“Prince Ennis is now to marry Laura,” Deaton concluded. He stepped forward and knelt beside Peter, pulling him in against his chest. Strong arms wrapped around him, anchoring him while he shuddered through the onslaught of grief.

 _Laura_. It was not enough for her to lose her king, mother, and brother all in one night. Now they meant to marry her to their murderer. Through choking breaths, he asked, “Cora?”

“Safe,” Deaton assured him. “Cora is safe.”

“They’ve destroyed us,” Peter wept. “They’ve taken everything.”

“I know,” Deaton whispered. He pressed his lips to the top of Peter’s head. “I’m sorry.”

* * *

  
  


Deaton and Stiles kept a close watch on him after that, neither allowing him to break down in solitude. In some ways, he felt grateful. Still, he felt the urge to lash out, to rage in ways that he did not want to inflict on his friend or lover. Peter took Stiles too roughly one night, shortly after finding out, and though Stiles assured him he was not badly injured nor upset, Peter had been afraid to touch him at all for days afterward.

Peter, for his part, kept a close eye on Kali and Deucalion. The wedding would not be held until the king was well enough to travel. Until then, his nieces were being held prisoners in their own home. They kept a closer eye on Peter, now, though he might not have thought it possible.

He caught one of the twins – he couldn’t tell which – spying on him from the edge of the training yard while he worked at the flail. The prince had his arms crossed over his chest, a nasty glare twitching down the length of his nose. Peter flung harder at the next target, the spiked ball exploding through the side of the wooden target. The prince flinched, and Peter felt a nasty curl of satisfaction.

The flail flew again and again. Each time it collided with its target, Peter imagined himself charging through the banquet hall, bashing in the heads of every rotten one of them. His elbows ached and his shoulders burned, but he could not bring himself to cease his assault. He spun again and stopped short, narrowly withdrawing his swing when he saw Stiles walking into the yard.

“My lord,” he said softly, bowing. In public like this, he had to make a show of his obedience. He seemed to struggle for what to say, then settled on, “You asked me to fetch you when your bath was ready.” He hadn’t. “And you’re looking quite fatigued, if I might say so.” Stiles lifted his eyebrows, imploring Peter heed him.

Peter turned and saw the prince staring. Still, he relented. “Right. Hang this up for me, then.” He passed the flail to Stiles and headed inside.

Once back in his quarters, Stiles quietly removed his mail, hung it for him, then helped him into the bath. The water had gone lukewarm, which Peter’s overheated muscles did not protest. A stool scooted up behind him as he relaxed, and a soft cloth brushed over his shoulder.

“You’re being awfully attentive,” Peter commented. Even now that they were sleeping together, Stiles didn’t bother with most of his servile tasks unless Peter asked him to. And Peter had been asking less frequently.

Stiles scrubbed at his chest. “You went too hard today. It looked like you wanted an injury.”

Peter didn’t know what to say to that, so he said nothing, allowing Stiles to lift his arms and scrub under them. He shifted forward so Stiles could get at his back.

“When my mother died,” Stiles said quietly, “I was angry for a long time.” He had not spoken of her since the first morning after his arrival, when he explained that she was dead.

“How long ago was it?” Peter asked.

“Nearly five years.” Which would have made Stiles thirteen or fourteen by Peter’s estimation. “After it happened, all I could think was that I wanted someone to pay for it. I wanted to see someone killed for what had happened to her.”

Peter turned to look at Stiles, not sure if he was allowed to speak his next question. He didn’t need to.

“She was taken by rogues,” he said, voice tight. “Attacked. They… they tormented her. She took her life after.”

“I’m sorry.” Peter placed a hand on Stiles’s knee, leaving a wet spot. “What became of her attackers?”

Stiles sighed and leaned forward, pressing his lips to the side of Peter’s head before turning him back around. He began to scrub at his back again. “I dreamed of seeing them brought to justice, but when I heard they had been, it did not bring the satisfaction I thought it would.”

Peter did not miss the lesson in his words. “You’re afraid I will attack the royal family.”

“I’m afraid you are rash in your grief, as all who are grieving become.”

There were few people in this world that Peter trusted. Fewer, now. But he had seldom felt so well looked after as he did then, under Stiles’s gentle touch. He got up and brought down the salve from Scott and rubbed it lovingly into his arms. With each stroke of Stiles’s hands, Peter felt himself sinking deeper, curling himself into the safety of this young man’s heart.

* * *

  
  


Summer came on stronger still, and they all found that the heat they had lamented in May and June had been nothing compared to the wrath of July. Peter could hardly stand to stay in his quarters in the day, high in a tower and baking in the sun. He had found a favored spot in a lesser-used courtyard, a bit overgrown but with windows and doors on only one side, so that he could not be spied on so easily.

It was there that Deaton found him one afternoon, sprawled in the grass with a book.

“Where is Stiles?” he asked in place of a greeting.

Peter lifted his head and tucked a blade of grass between the pages of the book to hold his place. “He went out for a few days, to visit with his father,” he explained. “He hasn’t had the chance since he arrived here.”

Deaton sat beside him, a cautious expression on his face. “Did he say where he would travel to?”

“Somewhere along the coast, I imagine?” he replied, shrugging a shoulder. Peter sat up, cross-legged, to face Deaton. “What’s troubling you today, friend?”

Deaton opened his mouth, then closed it, then laughed softly. “I fear I only bring you ill tidings these days. I can’t say I like it.”

A chill of fear coursed through him. “News from home?”

“No.” His friend drummed his fingers against his knee, steeling himself. Finally, he met Peter’s eye. “I’m sorry to bear such news, Peter,” Deaton said, “but I don’t believe Stiles is who he says.”

“He’s made no claims to be anyone special. He’s nothing but a commoner,” Peter protested.

“And I don’t think he’s that.”

Peter bristled. Deaton had been cautious of their affair so far, but he hadn’t seemed to dislike Stiles himself. “On what do you base this suspicion?”

Deaton slipped his hand into the pocket of his doublet and drew it out, two fingers pinched around something small and green. Leaning forward, Peter saw it was a bit of pease.

“Explain yourself.”

“Stiles and I dined together last week, while you were in the banquet hall,” Deaton said. “I saw this on the floor. I asked Stiles what it was, and he said, ‘A piece of pease,’”

Peter frowned. “And? What of it?”

With a shake of his head, Deaton explained, “A commoner would call it ‘a pea,’ not ‘a piece of pease.’”

“A what? A pea?”

“Most commoners can’t read, so they think of pease as p-e-a-s, as in ‘grains’ and therefore, in singular, ‘a pea’ as one might say ‘a grain.’”

“Stiles can read, though,” Peter protested.

Deaton tipped his head to the side and huffed. “There is another indictment against his claims. Regardless, anyone brought up in a common household would use the common word.”

Peter desperately wanted these accusations to prove unfounded, needed Stiles to be who he had been these past few weeks. However, he had known Deaton his entire life. He trusted him, and his judgment, entirely. “You suspect he’s of noble birth,” Peter sighed. He had suspected early on that Stiles was sent by Ducalion for the purpose of espionage moreso than to defend his daughter’s virtue. It had been a long time since he thought of him in such terms. “Why? Why send a nobleman as a spy? And what nobleman would agree to such a degrading assignment?”

“You assume he spies at the behest of King Deucalion,” Deaton ventured, tone cautious.

Peter glared, starting to feel impatient with Deaton’s obscurity. “Say what you mean,” he ordered.

Deaton dipped his head in concession. “Stiles’s name has given me pause since the beginning,” he said. “It’s an unusual name – you’ve said so yourself. I have never heard it used among the commonfolk.”

“Commonfolk come up with all sorts of absurd names,” Peter retorted. “What special meaning could this one hold?”

“Do you remember Lady Claudia of the Beacon?” Deaton asked.

Unfortunately, Peter did. It had been a nasty business, one of many examples of his father’s cruelty and selfishness. The Beacon was a small stretch of land in the highest hills of the borderlands, so named for the pyre constructed on the tallest mount, able to communicate by flame or smoke with far-off territories. Midway through the war, perhaps five years ago, his father and a small army took refuge at The Beacon to signal for reinforcements. Lord Noak, Lady Claudia’s husband, had refused, insisting that sending such a signal would bring King Deucalion’s men upon them as soon as the Hale army left.

His father imprisoned Lord Noak and Lady Claudia and, if rumor was to be believed, tormented the woman until she went mad and took her own life.

“What of her?” Peter asked, tense. Already, he felt himself recalling Stiles’s confessions at the side of his bath, weeks ago.

“The Beacon was actually of her inheritance,” Deaton said. “Lord Noak came from the east, the youngest of six sons. He would never have seen his own inheritance. Lady Claudia had no siblings and was sole heir to the fiefdom. When they married, Lord Noak took her family’s name.”

Peter closed his eyes, dreading the next words, though he felt sure of what they would tell him.

“Lord Noak’s family name was Stilinski. Those who could not pronounce it when he arrived here would often call him ‘Stiles.’”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The poem Stiles reads to Peter in the solar is an excerpt from Floris and Blancheflour, another Middle English romantic epic. He cuts off in the middle of a sentence. If he were able to finish, it would have gone:
> 
> "It was not long after then  
> That to Floris tiding came  
> That his father the king was dead.  
> And all the barons gave him red [advice]  
> That he should go home  
> And accept his kingdom."


	5. The Deceiver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having learned Stiles's true identity, Peter confronts him.

From the courtyard, they returned to Peter’s solar to look at a noble genealogy text Deaton found to support his accusations:

_Lady Claudia of the Beacon, only childe of Lord Wymond of the Beacon and Lady Royse his wyfe. Dark of haire and faire of skin with many moles derk in colour. Who was wedde by Lord Noak Stilinski (calt Stiles by somme), sixte son of Lord Mieczysław Stilinski a noble of the Lowelands in the East, browne of haire and faire of skin. Upon the wedding of whome her husband took the name ‘of the Beacon.’ To whome one son was borne in good helth, Lord Mieczysław of the Beacon, browne of haire and faire of skin wyth mani moles, as his moder._

Lord Mieczysław.

At first, Peter thought Stiles had gotten lucky. Being away to “visit his father” – or whatever treacherous enterprise he had undertaken – he had missed the initial flame of Peter’s wrath. For, oh, how how bright that flame had raged. He threw the book, cursing his deceiver’s false name. He paced the solar, hurling foul words and abusing the furniture as Deaton patiently waited for his temper to settle.

However, his ire only grew hotter as the initial burst fell to a smolder.

“He put the nightshade in my chambers, didn’t he?” Peter asked from his bath the next day. His fingers gripped white-knuckle at the edge of the tub.

Deaton sat in the open window, a damp cloth draped across the back of his neck as he prayed for a breeze. “It seems likely,” he agreed.

He thought about the sweet, earnest look on Stiles’s face when Peter questioned him that night. He thought about how quick Stiles had been to kiss him after. To distract him. Peter glared at the ceiling, his anger almost secondary to the shame he felt at being so easily swayed. “The morning after,” he said, “I told you I was not foolish enough to fall in love.”

“You were lying.” Deaton stated the words simply.

“When did you realize?” He turned to see a sad smile on his friend’s face.

“The moment the words left your mouth.”

Stiles had meant for Peter to fall in love with him. He felt sure of it now. Every soft word, every hushed laugh against his ear, every crocodile tear of sympathy: all of them, ploys for his affections.

“I’ll kill him,” Peter decided, not sure if he meant it. He could imagine wrapping his hands around the graceful neck he once anointed with kisses. He could imagine squeezing as the light went from those clever, honey-sweet eyes. He could imagine weeping after, holding the body he had beloved.

“I would advise you question him first,” Deaton replied. He had his head tipped back against the wall of the window alcove, eyes closed. A sheen of sweat shone on his brow. “After that, I’ll help you.”

* * *

  
  


The next morning, Deaton found Peter bent over his desk, [a map](https://i.imgur.com/LvbROgP.jpg) spread across the surface.

“I’m glad to see this upset has not made you careless in your endeavors,” he commented.

Peter carefully sketched an X beside the city of Lahey.

“It’s only me, if you wondered,” Deaton added. “The spies stopping by to see you plot treason have already come and gone.”

“If a little nothing territory like The Beacon has defected, who else can we rely upon?” Peter sighed.

Deaton stepped up to the desk. Peter had crossed off Lahey on the coast of Nematon Lake, The Beacon, Argentus in the north, and all of St. Martin.

“Your father never won his allies by love or loyalty, I fear,” Deaton sighed. “The northern plains will be glad to be rid of his rule as well. He heavily taxed their farms and gave little back in defense.”

Looking over his shoulder, Peter frowned. “You think they would defect to Eastfall, a power so far to the south?”

“More likely to St. Martin,” Deaton advised, “or perhaps The Argents, if they use this opportunity to win their independence at last.”

Blowing out a sigh, Peter placed another X beside Dunbar in the plains. “I think I could still call upon The Bend and The Fens,” he said, tapping his pencil against the region. “They may have no love for my father, but I fought alongside those men for years.”

A hand curled around his shoulder and squeezed. “Were you king, yes.” Deaton spoke gently, like he feared Peter would shatter or perhaps erupt. It chafed his nerves despite his best efforts for restraint. “You renounced your claim of your own free will and have no legal right to the throne. They could not follow you and risk the ire of Eastfall.”

With a groan, Peter pushed himself away from the desk and turned to pace the room. He cupped both hands behind his neck, massaging his strained muscles. “I must do something, Deaton,” he insisted. “I cannot allow Laura to marry that monster. Talia might have withstood it, but Laura is still so young.”

He cast a last hopeless look at the map, full of enemies and lost allies. Open ocean to the north and west. The Southlands beyond the sea, war-torn and fearsome for generations. “If I could get Laura and Cora, we might flee east through the mountains,” Peter ventured. He knew little of eastern politics and had no allies there. What other options did he have? He had run out of map.

* * *

  
  


A pounding from center of the solar roused Peter and Deaton from their midday rest. Peter had taken to lying directly on the floor, an attempt to get down and away from the heat as much as possible. Deaton, who had taken the couch, rose and walked to the large woven rug in the center of the room. Drawing up the corner, he revealed a wooden servant’s hatch and lifted it.

A nest of tangled brown hair rose through the hatch and, hidden beneath it, the filthy face of a young girl. One of the servants’ children, most likely. She sounded out of breath as she exclaimed, “Stiles has been seen entering the castle. I believe he’s coming this way!”

From the pocket of his tunic, Deaton withdrew a silver farthing and pressed it into her hand. “Good girl. You’re getting to be the quickest of the lot of you.”

“Thank you, sir.” She beamed at him, then her reward, then ducked down the hatch and out of sight.

Peter had sat up to watch the exchange in dry amusement. “Someday, Deaton,” he said as Deaton straightened out the rug, “you really should find a wife and have a whole gaggle of babes. You have a talent for putting them to good use, after all.”

Deaton stood. “I think one needy, sulking woman in my life is enough.”

“Hm,” Peter said, then frowned. “Hey.”

Before he could further protest his insult, Deaton was at his side, pulling him to his feet. “Go to your bedchamber and wait, as we discussed,” he urged, pushing Peter at the stairs.

“You’re the rudest manservant I’ve ever had,” Peter accused.

“I’m the only manservant you’ve ever had,” Deaton replied, then left him.

If the solar felt stifling midday, his bedchamber was an oven. Peter went directly to the window farthest from the door, the only one at an angle which caught errant wafts of sea breeze. The rest either faced land or were blocked by the rest of the castle. From that window, though, he had a view over the teeming bustle of the populous below, across to the city walls and the gleaming bay beyond.

He thumbed the hilt of the dagger on his belt.

In all his time here, Peter had not once had the opportunity to see the bay up close. His guarded escort from Triskelion had brought him overland from the northeast. Since then, he had not been allowed outside the city walls.

The stairs creaked behind him. “Good lord, how can you stand this?” Stiles laughed. “I think you could cook a pig in here.”

Peter gave himself a moment, then painted on a smile and turned. He had expected Stiles to appear transformed in some way, like he had been a monster enchanted to appear human, and now his true form would show. He looked the same, though: young, lean, beautiful. His tunic stuck to his chest with sweat, and his legs and feet were bare. “Come here, darling,” Peter said. “How was your journey?”

Stiles rushed forward to embrace him, his lush, yielding lips meeting against Peter’s stiff ones. He withdrew. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Peter caught movement at the door out of the corner of his eye. He drew his dagger just as the door slammed shut. Stiles looked over his shoulder to see Deaton standing at the door, and when he turned back, the dagger was at his throat.

“Are you armed?” Peter asked.

His eyes wide, Stiles said, “No. Peter, why are you -”

Peter patted at Stiles’s waist with his free hand, feeling for any concealed knives. When he found none, he set the hand on his shoulder to guide him backwards. Deaton brought the desk chair forward, and Peter pressed Stiles into it.

“I don’t understand why you’re acting like this.” Stiles looked from Peter to Deaton in panic.

Deaton began binding Stiles’s wrists to the arms of the chair with lengths of rope.

“Were you really seeing your father?” Peter asked. “You wouldn’t have had time to ride all the way to The Beacon and back in three days. Perhaps Lord Noak came to meet you?”

He watched the color drain from Stiles’s face.

“No response?”

“I didn’t,” Stiles answered, nearly a whisper. “I didn’t see my father. Peter, I swear, it’s not like -”

“Not like what, Stiles? Or should I call you Lord Mieczysław?”

Stiles looked down, offering no struggle as Deaton wrapped more rope around his middle. “Mieczysław,” he said, softly correcting Peter’s pronunciation.

“So tell me what it isn’t like,” Peter prompted. “It isn’t like you came here seeking revenge against my family? It’s not like you posed as a servant to hide evidence of the king’s murder attempt among my belongings? It’s not like you went to bed with me to escape suspicion?”

Their prisoner quietly bore the accusations, head hanging.

“You did, didn’t you?” Peter asking, nudging the dagger below Stiles’s chin. “You placed the deadly nightshade in my chambers.”

“Yes.”

“You conspired with the assassin so I would be blamed.”

“Yes.”

Deaton cast a look toward Stiles’s legs, holding more rope, but Peter shook his head. It looked like this interrogation would not take so long after all.

“Did you work at his bidding or he at yours? Did some other power urge you to this act?”

Stiles lifted his gaze, expression twisted in some sort of defiant agony that Peter could not interpret. His jaw was tight, a snarl raised in the dimple beside his nose, but his eyes were wide and wet. “The plot was of my design and my direction. Scott acted at my bidding.”

Peter had already convinced himself that this all must be true, but hearing it confirmed hurt more than he had prepared himself for. “Your plot failed – I am still alive. What was your next move?”

No response came, Stiles’s head bowed once more.

Peter dug the point of the dagger against his throat until a speck of blood appeared. “Tell me!”

When Stiles lifted his head again, he was weeping. Perhaps at having been caught out, perhaps because he realized his own doom. “That you are alive relieves me now,” he said, voice trembling.

“It shouldn’t,” Peter insisted, guarding himself against these treacherous plays at sympathy. They had worked on him before, but no longer. “I’m going to kill you when this is over.”

A choked sob broke free from Stiles’s lips. He shook his head, though Peter’s dagger was at his throat, and Peter had to withdraw it. “Please,” he begged. “No, I cannot bear to think you despise me so. Please don’t speak like that.”

“You betrayed me!” Peter thundered. “You crept in my bed and plotted to kill me and destroy my family! My father, my sister, my nephew are dead because of your treachery! You let me weep in your arms and take comfort in you when you, all along, were the cause of my grief!” He heard his own voice crack. He had not meant to break down in such a manner.

“Three days,” Stiles said. “Please, I beg you: grant me three days to show you a penance great enough to forgive my actions. If you are not satisfied after that, I will put my life into your hands freely.”

Deaton gave Peter a warning look.

Peter scoffed. “You would have me release you only to disappear and flee home.”

“You need not release me,” Stiles insisted. “I swear, I was already working in your favor before you found me out. The means of my forgiveness will be at hand in three days.” He shifted, pulling at the restraints around his wrists. “You can keep me bound to this chair until then, if that is your wish.”

He looked to Deaton again, needing some confirmation that this plan seemed reasonable and that he was not clouded by his own emotions. Deaton frowned for a moment, then tipped his head to the side.

“Fine,” Peter said. He sheathed his dagger. “Three days.”

* * *

  
  


Peter did not keep Stiles bound to the chair, but he did not let him out of sight.

That evening, a servant came to his quarters, bidding him to sup with the royal family. These formal meals had ceased for a while after the king’s maiming. Peter suspected they had started again for all but himself, in the wake of his family’s destruction. He had only received a handful of invitations in recent days.

From his seat at the table in the solar, Peter’s eyes slid across to Stiles. He sat in a window alcove, hugging his knees as he gazed out. “Tell them I am unwell this evening,” Peter told the servant. “Send my apologies. You can have food brought here this evening. Enough for three.”

The servant bowed. “Of course, m’lord. I’ll send for the food right away.”

After his footsteps had grown faint, he heard Stiles say, “Thank you.” When Peter looked up, Stiles was facing him, eyes red. “For seeing that I have supper.”

It hadn’t even occurred to him not to. Peter shifted, stretching his stiff shoulders. “One has a responsibility to feed one’s prisoners,” he replied stiffly.

For a long moment, Stiles just stared, chewing on his lip. Finally, he said, “Your father did not believe in such courtesy.”

Peter shoved away from the table noisily and stalked to the cupboard. He withdrew a skin of wine, uncorked it, and took a swig. It was unpleasantly warm, but he took a second drink regardless. Looking over his shoulder at Stiles, he said, “Don’t look hopefully upon this. If I get drunk, I’m more like to break my word and kill you than I am to grow careless and let you escape.”

* * *

  
  


That night, Stiles lay on the rug beside Peter’s bed, but his breathing did not even into restfulness. Peter lay awake, staring into the dark, his fingers clenched tight in the sheets like they might hold together the warring pieces of his own mind.

Part of him did not think it possible to forgive Stiles’s treachery, that these three days would prove nothing but an exercise in restraint and agony. Another part, the part that held his love, wanted desperately to be proven wrong, for things to return to the way they were. Still another feared that second part, feared it would not recognize the frailty of Stiles’s penance and would grant forgiveness where none was due.

“Do you know what he did to her?” Stiles asked from the shadows.

Peter swallowed around the lump in his throat. “It was horrible,” he conceded, “but you meant to punish me for my father’s crime.”

“Your death was to be your father’s punishment.”

He could only laugh at that, the sound echoing harsh and cold in the blanket of night. “The death of a disinherited son,” he said. “If I held doubts that your plan was the work of a cruel, ignorant child, they are now at rest.”

“I didn’t know,” Stiles told him. “I didn’t know that you were not your father’s son.”

“I am his son,” Peter snarled, voice raising too loud for such a fragile hour.

“You’re not,” Stiles insisted. “And I did not know he had abused his own family in the same manner by which he did my own.”

Peter rolled, put his back to Stiles, and nursed the ache in his chest.

* * *

  
  


He drank more the next day, the first full day of Stiles’s reprieve. It wasn’t Peter’s usual custom to drink away his agonies, but he could not take to the training yard as he normally might have. He could, of course, leave Stiles under Deaton’s watch, but it didn’t feel right. In any case, if another invitation for supper arose, he could hardly claim prolonged illness while out swinging a sword.

So he drank.

Deaton, to his surprise, did not show great disapproval for the activity, though he did not partake. He guarded his senses too closely to enjoy stupor.

Stiles stayed quiet. He took up a book, one they had read together before, but did not turn the pages.

By the time he and Stiles retired to the bedchamber, Peter could hardly manage the stairs upright. He stumbled against the wall, leaning on it as he ambled his way to the dressing screen. The way the room swayed about him reminded him of being on a riverboat in a storm. Peter fumbled at the laces of his tunic, fingers refusing to cooperate.

A hand pushed his aside. “Peter, let me,” Stiles said.

In a flare of anger, Peter shoved blindly. “Don’t call me that,” he snarled.

He squinted and, slowly, his vision settled into an image of Stiles, staring at him, fearful. “What should I call you then?” he asked. “ _My lord_? I am not a servant, as you now know.”

Peter frowned, rubbing at his face. He associated Stiles calling him by name with their time together, as lovers. “You played at a servant,” he slurred. “You can still… I’ll still treat you as one.”

“You never treated me as a servant.” Stiles was in his space again, stroking his hands over Peter’s shoulders. “Not really.”

Stiles smelled familiar, this close. Peter hadn’t expected to notice. He lurched forward unsteadily. “I should have,” he muttered. “Posing as a bedwarmer. What if I had, hmm?” Anger simmered low in his belly as he crowded against Stiles. “Or is that what you wanted? Wanted me to defile you, take you? Prove I was my father’s son? Was that your – your _ingenious_ plan, Miecha – Missa – _whatever_ your damn name is...”

“Stiles,” he said. “You can still call me Stiles.”

“Answer me,” Peter snarled, grabbing Stiles by his elbows and shaking him. “What would you do – have done – if I treated you as a bedwarmer?”

“I don’t know,” Stiles admitted. His face was close to Peter’s suddenly, breath warm against his face. “It wasn’t the plan. You caught me in here, and I had to offer some explanation.”

All a horrible mistake, then. Only Stiles had run with his mistake, used it to embed himself in Peter’s life, to win his affections. Seduce him. Peter’s gaze caught on Stiles’s lips, wet and slightly parted. “I should… I could,” he heard himself say, the words rolling thickly on his tongue. “Could still use you as I wish. If you play at bedwarmer, you – you should be prepared for such.”

Stiles said nothing, but Peter felt him trying to pull back.

No. He could not, even in his anger, stoop to live up to his namesake. Peter shoved Stiles away roughly. He turned away and tore at the laces of his tunic before yanking it over his head.

“My feelings were not an act,” Stiles said softly. “I resisted them at first, because you were my enemy. By the time my plans failed, I had come to realize you were not. Only then did I kiss you.”

Peter couldn’t decide if it hurt more or less to think Stiles had cared for him in return. Perhaps more, because he also could not decide if he believed it.

“I love you,” Stiles continued, his voice cracking. “Peter, please. Please believe that I love you.”

Peter shoved off his breeches and stumbled to his bed. “I don’t,” he snapped as he fell naked onto the sheets. “I don’t believe you.”

* * *

  
  


Peter suffered a headache the second morning and refrained from wine the rest of the day. On the third morning, he woke clear-headed, bolting upright at the sound of wood scraping against wood.

Stiles stood in front of his desk, fully dressed, bent low over an open drawer. Peter realized with a start that he had found the false bottom in the middle drawer, where he hid his letters from Triskelion – his letters from Talia.

Throwing off the sheets, Peter flung himself out of bed. “What are you doing!” he roared. He crossed the room in three strides and seized Stiles by the wrist, twisting him violently to snatch a letter from his hand. “Those aren’t yours to touch! You don’t get to look upon her words!” He dropped the letter onto the desk and shoved Stiles back against the wall, a hand closing around his throat. This was it. Three days had passed, and his ire had not settled. His fingers tightened into soft flesh.

“Peter,” Stiles choked, fumbling at his arm with both hands. His mouth gaped and closed as he struggled for breath. “Peter, I’m -”

Peter relaxed his grip only enough to allow Stiles breath, which he took in greedy gasps.

“I’m packing,” he said. “Peter, I’m _packing_.”

Frowning, he loosened his hand further.

Stiles trembled in his grasp, face flushed and eyes wide. He coughed quietly. “I know they are precious to you, and you would not want to be without them. I was packing them with your things.”

“Packing for what?” Peter could hear his own pulse thudding in his ears.

Soft fingertips slid over his jaw, a show of affection he should have rebuffed but could not bear to. Stiles smiled at him, despite the hand still loosely curled around his throat. “We are leaving this place today,” he said. “You, me, and Deaton. I’m getting us out.”

* * *

  
  


They could not bring much besides necessities, Talia’s letters, and a few other sentimental trinkets or valuables. They stuffed them to the bottom of two baskets, which Deaton and Stiles would wear on their backs. He and Deaton split all of the money they had into coin purses, hidden in different places on their persons. Spare boots and hose were all the clothing they could fit, but Stiles assured them they should not need more.

It looked like nothing but a trip to the market with two servants accompanying him to carry his purchases. They stopped first at a baker’s shop, where Peter purchased rolls for each of them to enjoy. He understood without being told that they had to keep up appearances. Deucalion may have lost his sight, but his eyes were everywhere.

“Ah, my lord,” Stiles said brightly, stopping outside a small shop with a thatched roof. “Did you not say you wished to purchase some perfume?”

“Yes,” he agreed. “I did say that.”

Inside, the shop was dimly lit with no windows in the front of the shop, only thin streams of light from the front door and another door into a back room. An overwhelming chaos of fragrances assaulted them so that Peter covered his nose at first, and Deaton sneezed. Shelves along the side of the shop held cloth bundles of herbs.

“Lord Peter!” An old woman emerged from the back room. “Such an honor for you to visit my humble shop. Please, for a man of your stature, you must see the back room where the finer things are kept.” She had once, he could tell, been of a short but reasonable stature. However, age had curled her back into such a pronounced stoop that she barely rose to his elbow. She ushered the three of them into the back room, calling, “If you need anything, just let me know!”

From the front room, Peter heard other voices, men’s voices, and the old woman began to talk at them in a long, meandering fashion.

There were more windows in the back room, as well as a door which opened onto an alleyway. Stiles led them through it, then across to an open cellar hatch. He exchanged a look with Deaton as Stiles dropped into it. They followed without a word.

Their journey went on like this for some time, Stiles taking them up to an attic connecting two buildings, then through another cellar, then across an alley. Before long, Peter had lost his sense of direction and could not have even begun to determine where in the city they were.

After what felt like more than an hour, Stiles’s pace slowed in a dingy, waste-wet street. The oppressive smell of hot manure hung heavy in the air. “Here,” Stiles said, hauling open a wooden door on rollers.

Hay covered the floor inside, garnished here and there in lumps of manure. In place of windows, single boards had merely been removed at odd intervals on a long, wooden wall. Five dozing mules stood against it, tied to posts. At the end of the long stable, hidden in shadows, a hooded figure sat on a wooden bench.

As the figure stood, Peter heard Stiles closing the door behind them. “Who is this?” he asked, hushed.

The figure stepped toward them slowly, his stride on the left shorter than the right. Lame, or perhaps merely injured. He passed through the narrow shafts of light, but his face stayed hidden beneath the hood. Five paces from them, the figure stopped.

“It’s good to see you, Uncle Peter.” The hood fell back, revealing his nephew’s face. Derek.

Peter couldn’t recall deciding to move, but in an instant, he was upon him, wrapping him into a tight hug.

Derek hissed and pulled back, a hand pressed to his side.

“You’re hurt,” Peter said, frowning.

“I was shot with an arrow fleeing Triskelion,” he explained. “It’s mostly healed, but I’ve had a four day ride from the Fens. It seems to be inflamed.”

Peter held him by the arm, helping him back to the bench. They both sat. Deaton and Stiles stepped up in front of them. “You’ve been at the Fens?” he asked.

Derek nodded. Now that Peter could look at him more closely, he looked quite exhausted. “I fell in the Martin River after I was shot. A riverboat fished me out and carried me downstream to Vernon Bend. I nearly succumbed to my wound there. Luckily, a rather adept healer was passing through. Lord Scott of House McCall in the Southlands. I believe you’ve met him.”

Peter looked up and saw Stiles smirking at him, his arms crossed over his chest. “Which is how you came to know that Derek was alive,” he supposed.

“They kept him well hidden,” Stiles said. “We had to wait until he was recovered enough to make the journey here. I knew you would be wary of taking action without the assurance of seeing him alive and well with your own eyes.”

Deaton placed a hand on Derek’s shoulder. “I am much relieved to see you,” he said softly. “Please, let me take a look at your wound.”

Derek shook his head, clasping his hand on top of Deaton’s in a show of affection. “We haven’t time.” He then looked to Stiles. “You must be Lord Stiles. It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

That finally took Peter out of the shock of the moment, reminding him of the matter which had occupied them these past days: Stiles’s penance. He did not know how to feel. Talia was still dead because of Stiles’s actions, but she had been in danger before that. And now, at least, Stiles had returned his nephew to him. That still left his nieces in danger.

“Well, Stiles?” he prompted. “What is this plan of yours? I hope it’s better considered than the last.”

Stiles ducked his head but smiled. “Does this mean you’ve decided not to kill me?”

Peter tipped his head to the side. “For now. Let us see if we make it out of the city alive.”

Derek pushed to his feet and went to a mule cart near the door. “You and Deaton are well recognized in Eastfall, so you will have to ride under the hay in back. Stiles and I will lead the mules. Once we’re clear of the city walls, there is a ship waiting for us on the bay.”

Deaton went to the cart and unloaded his basket into it. “A ship to where, might I ask, your majesty?”

That gave Peter a start. For, of course, Derek was rightful heir to the throne of Triskelion.

“I am not king,” Derek replied. “We are going north to rally what loyal allies we can.”

Peter got to his feet. He found himself smiling. He had felt sour over forsaking his birthright months ago. Now, he would be relieved to see any of his kin upon the throne. “Only a king may rally his bannermen,” he insisted.

Stiles began untying the mules, leading them to the yolk. Derek stood beside the cart, impossibly regal for a man in a grubby peasant’s cloak. He lifted an eyebrow at Peter. “Fine, then. If you insist.” He stepped over and clapped his hands onto Peter’s shoulders. “As rightful heir to the throne of Triskelion, I reinstate your claim to the throne, above my own.”

“That – that’s not what I meant,” Peter protested.

Derek grinned and roughed a hand over Peter’s hair. “Too bad, uncle. You have bannermen to rally.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh I'm getting very excited about the action-packed last two chapters! I hope you're hyped! If you missed it, there is a map of the kingdoms linked to the scene where Peter is reading the map. Hand-drawn by yours truly in a fit of procrastination.


	6. The Ally

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As allies gather around him, Peter begins his quest to rescue his nieces and retake his home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a lot of strategy going on here, so it might help to take a look at the [map](https://i.imgur.com/LvbROgP.jpg) I linked in the previous chapter.

The cart, along with its oppressive cover of hay, stopped at an ill-kept, secluded pier, well outside the city walls. The bay was still narrow this close to Eastfall, but widened rapidly as it rushed out to sea. One could only barely catch sight of the thin green line of the opposite shore at the mouth of the bay. The water itself was murky, crowded with ships coming and going to the docks. Still more buoyed further out in the water, anchored offshore.

At the end of the pier sat a rowboat.

Stiles already had one of their baskets in hand, striding toward it. “Deaton, you should have time to see to Prince Derek while we row out. Derek, did they say where they would lay anchor?”

“Toward the northern shore,” Derek replied. He took one of the mule packs down, but Deaton was on him in a moment, snatching it away. Derek scowled. “They’ll have hung the standard of the Fens from the port side.”

Peter took the second basket, and that was it: the sum total of their provisions and possessions. All else would be at the mercy of their rescuing ship. He stopped beside Stiles and glanced sideways at him. He still did not know how to feel about his once-lover. For the moment, at least, he was an ally.

“You know how to row?” he asked, eyeing Stiles’s frame. It wasn’t that he lacked musculature – this Peter knew from experience – but he carried himself in the manner of someone slight, agile.

Stiles rolled his eyes. “Yes. Simply because I am _leaner_ than his lordship -”

“His majesty,” Derek corrected with a saucy grin as he made his way to the boat.

Peter looked at Stiles in alarm, worried for a moment that he might actually use such an appellation. “Don’t you dare,” he warned.

Stiles offered a hand to help Derek into the boat.

“Derek, explain to me again,” Peter said as he climbed in after, “why you should not like to keep your rightful succession to the throne?”

Derek settled himself in the center of the boat, waiting until Stiles and Peter’s weight came to steady it before leaning against one side. “Oh, yes, because it is such a stable, appealing title of late,” he replied, eyebrows managing performative feats of derision. “No, thank you. I have been murdered quite enough for one summer.”

God, Peter had missed him.

Deaton settled into the boat last, seating himself beside Derek in the bottom of the boat. “Take this damned cape off, and lift your tunic,” he instructed.

“Why, Deaton, it’s been so long since we saw one another. I thought we might become reacquainted before resuming such affections.”

Stiles laughed loudly, and Peter realized he had not heard the sound in near a week.

They began their long journey out into the bay, battling the roiling waves off the larger ships. Stiles did prove rather adept at rowing, much to Peter’s relief. His tunic hung wide around his shoulders, the muscles beneath bunching and releasing with each stroke. His pale skin glistened with sweat.

“No, I figure,” Derek continued, “I’ll let you get the crown through all of this nastiness and upheaval.” Peter glanced down and saw he had his tunic lifted, baring a rather ugly, puckered pink scar on his side, between the ribs. “Then, once the throne of Triskelion is more secure, you will do something stupid to put yourself in an early grave, and I can rule in peace until the end of my days.”

“Merely inflamed,” Deaton reported, then looked back at Peter. “His pride, too, I’m afraid.”

“And what if I should choose to sire an heir to overtake your claim?” Peter challenged.

Derek snorted. “Found a stable boy with nice birthing hips, have you?”

That broke Deaton into a loud laugh, and he reached over to shove at Peter’s knee.

Peter chuckled, his arms starting already to warm and strain with the motion of the oars. “Now, tell us who has financed this expedition? I assume none at Triskelion yet know Derek lives.” He risked a glance at Stiles. “The Beacon?”

Stiles looked away. “My father does not know of my shifted loyalties,” he admitted. “I shall need to beseech upon him in person before the Beacon grants aid to a Hale.”

That caught him by surprise, but before Peter could press further on the matter, Derek spoke in Stiles’s place:

“You won more loyalties than you know during the war,” he said. “The sitting lords and ladies of our domains may be resentful of my grandfather and cautious of choosing sides, but their heirs who fought by your side in the past have faith in you. It is upon them that we rely.”

* * *

  
  


Once their boat finally hit the deck of the ship, Peter felt his arms surrender suddenly to the exhaustion of more than an hour’s rowing. They protested as he hauled himself out, and he stumbled practically headfirst into a tall, solid body. His gaze rose slowly, coming to rest finally on a familiar face.

“Sir Boyd,” he said in surprise, then laughed and lunged forward to meet the man in a rough hug, each thumping the other on the back. Boyd was younger than Peter but had joined the battlefield at the ripe age of sixteen. In the intervening years, he had grown into both an accomplished fighter and a damn good man. Loyal, practical, reserved in speech. Of all his possible allies, Peter felt relieved to know that Boyd was among them.

Boyd, grinning, pushed him back a step with hands on either of Peter’s shoulders. “I am glad to see you, my friend.”

Peter returned the gesture and squeezed. “Not half as glad as I am to see you, I promise.”

Derek stepped up beside them, and they let their arms fall. “Sir Boyd, I trust your journey was smooth.”

“Smoother than yours, I imagine. It’s a bad heat for such a ride.”

Around them, crew members were securing the rowboat and hoisting the sails in a flurry of activity. Peter had never been aboard a ship of this size before, though he had seen its like and larger from ashore in St. Martin. It seemed to require a great many hands to prepare it for sea.

The door to the captain’s cabin in the quarterdeck banged open. “Alright, where is he!”

“Oh, good lord,” Peter muttered, looking over Boyd’s shoulder.

There she was: Lady Erica of the Red Fens, striding across the deck in a man’s tunic and hose with heavy leather boots that came to her knees, her hair pinned behind her head. She had painted her lips a bright, blasphemous red, which framed a vicious grin.

“I meant to ask you about her,” Derek muttered at his ear.

“There is no explaining _her_ ,” Peter replied, then donned a polite smile as she stopped in front of him. “Should I be surprised that you have joined this undertaking?” he asked.

“I have demands,” she informed him.

“Truly, this shocks me to my core.”

“You _need_ the Fens, and I have demands,” she insisted. Erica clasped her hands behind her back, chin tilted up defiantly.

Derek nudged his arm. “This is how they talk to kings these days. You should work on that.”

Peter rolled his eyes. “What are your demands, Lady Erica?”

She had the same hard-set jaw and furious glare she had worn the last time he saw her, battling in the eastern borderlands.

Some years ago, he sent word to the Fens and surrounding regions that all of the noble families should send their eldest sons to be trained as knights. A fortnight later, ‘Lord Jonas’ had arrived, the weakest and most incompetent trainee he had ever laid eyes on. It didn’t take more than a few days to discover that what he had actually received was Lady Erica. Her younger brother Jonas suffered a shaking disease, she admitted. She had come in his stead.

Peter could not say why and sometimes cursed himself for it, but he agreed to keep her on. He had oft worried the training would be too much for a woman, that she would perish from the intensity. Some days, he thought, Erica shared his concern. Still, she kept on and grew into an absolute terror, the creation of which he would likely have to answer for after his death.

“I think I can guess,” Peter added, “but let me hear it.”

“I will be knighted,” she said.

“God help me.” Peter turned away from her and started walking back toward Deaton.

“I need an answer!” she called.

Without looking back, Peter raised a hand and waved it in concession. “Yes, yes! Fine!”

Deaton was grinning at him. “Already making hard compromises, your majesty?”

“Don’t you start,” Peter grumbled. “Where did Stiles get off to?” He looked around and spotted Stiles standing along the handrail on the other side of the boat.

With Scott.

“I beg that you not act rashly,” Deaton said, tone low. He wrapped a hand around Peter’s forearm and held firm. “We have not yet been able to discuss the matter of his penance, as he called it.”

Peter kept his eyes on Stiles and Scott. They were affectionate with one another, smiling and talking animatedly in the manner of friends after a long separation.

“Am I to forgive all upon this one act?” Peter wondered aloud.

Deaton sighed. “That I cannot advise. Though I would say that this was not one act but a series of rather impressive feats. To arrange all of this remotely, with only one short journey out of the city, much of the plan must have been entrusted to Lord Scott. It is also clear that he had undertaken this escape plan far before you and I discovered his identity.”

Finally, he tore his gaze away and looked at his friend beside him. “He gave me back my nephew. Scott saved his life. But their actions still cost me my sister.”

That Deaton did not remark upon the exclusion of his father spoke for itself. “Stiles is clearly a schemer,” he reasoned, “as you and I are often schemers. For now, it appears he is content to scheme on your behalf.”

Before Peter could reply, he spotted another familiar face walking down from the prow. This man had not deigned to garb himself in the less formal seagoing attire that the rest wore but instead boasted a finely studded leather vest over a short, embroidered blue tunic with patterned hose beneath. He surveyed the activity of the ship with a lazy sort of curiosity.

“Lord Lahey,” Peter greeted.

“Lord Isaac is fine,” he replied. “Lord Lahey was my father.”

‘Was’ being the operative word. “I must admit I am surprised to see you among my rescuers,” Peter told him, cautious.

Isaac tipped his head to the side. “Why, when I have your father to thank for my inheritance? And now that _he’s_ dead, I suppose the debt must be repaid to you.”

Peter felt his eyebrows climbing toward his hairline. “Ah. Of course.”

Laughing at Peter’s visible discomfort, Isaac rocked back on his heels. “While most men are beheaded to their detriment, I think you and I can agree that there are those for whom it is a vast improvement of character.” He pursed his lips and stared off over Peter’s shoulder as if in contemplation. “Was a bit theatrical, though, what your father did with the head.”

Deaton cleared his throat. “So are we to understand that all of Lahey is behind you?”

Isaac squinted, his expression twisting into a disagreeable sort of shape. “Not quite.”

“‘Not quite’ as in there are limitations to their support?” Peter asked. “Or ‘not quite’ as in ‘no’?”

Wagging a finger toward Peter, Isaac said, “The second one.” Before Peter could heave the weary sigh he had planned, Isaac went on. “There are council members and advisers to contend with – you know how it is. And some of them actually cared for my father, god help them. In any case, once we get this whole business turned around, Lahey will be back safely in your grasp.”

Deaton had a hand pressed his mouth to cover whatever displeased expression had fought its way to the surface. “Are you the last of our posse of allies, then, your lordship?” he asked.

Isaac looked across the deck, sighting Boyd and Erica at the opposite handrail. “Not quite. Sir Liam is around here somewhere.”

“Sir Liam?” Peter echoed. The name was not familiar.

“Of Dunbar,” Isaac replied, walking toward the prow. He went halfway up the steps then hollered, “Hey, Liam!”

Deaton’s brow was furrowed. “I believe Lord Dunbar has a son by that name,” he offered, “but he would only be -”

A figure came rushing to the stairs. He wore the colors of Dunbar, red-yellow and green, and had clearly mis-laced his own tunic, the string on one side hanging almost to his waist as the other sat bunched at his neck. He appeared out of breath, panting as he followed Isaac down the stairs. The closer he got, the younger he appeared.

“Dear god,” Peter said, “they’ve knighted an infant. No wonder Lady Erica is demanding her title. We’ll be knighting horses next.”

The boy that stumbled over to him had a manic sort of energy as he rushed to speak. “Prin – Lor – um, King? Your majesty!” He bowed his head. “I’m so glad you’re safe now. Your majesty.”

Peter cast a bewildered look toward Isaac, who stood a few strides back, scratching the back of his own neck with a bored expression. “Have we met, Sir Liam?” Peter asked.

“Oh! Um, yes. Well, no. Well, I saw you. Well, you – you spoke to me, but I don’t think you actually – you said, ‘My horse, boy!’ but you never actually looked at – I mean, I was just – I was a squire. I was only a child then.”

“Whereas now you are…?” Peter ventured.

“A knight!” Liam chirped.

“This must have occurred since I left Triskelion.”

“Oh, true,” he agreed. “It was just before we left. Sir Isaac knighted me for joining on this quest.”

“You’re welcome!” Isaac called, a bit too loudly.

Peter was starting to see the appeal of beheading Lahey lords. “And so do we have the support of Dunbar?” he asked, dreading that he already knew the answer.

Liam opened and closed his mouth a few times before uttering, “Well, I should say… that is… heh.” He winced. “You have… my support? Your majesty?”

“Perfect.” Then Peter called, “Lord Stiles!”

Stiles began to come toward him, calling back, “Yes, my king?”

He met Stiles halfway in the center of the deck, far enough from the ears of Sir Liam that he could speak freely in a low tone.

“First, don’t call me that,” he snapped. “Secondly, while I appreciate the effort you’ve taken in gathering three and a half knights plus a southern lord who almost had me executed, is there, anywhere in your brilliant plan, an actual army?”

Stiles bit his lower lip and stared at Peter with an expression he could not identify. Perhaps hopeful. He ducked his head respectfully. “With a little luck, careful timing, and some very persuasive entreaties, yes,” he agreed.

“Entreaties to whom?” Peter asked, wary.

Looking out on the water, which they had begun to navigate toward the mouth of the bay, Stiles explained, “We’re now on our way to the first. We have an audience with Queen Lydia in St. Martin.”

* * *

St. Martin, four days’ voyage north along the coast, was an independent city-state which had maintained a tense but civil relation with Triskelion for several generations. They had their own monarchy and their own armies which they sometimes deigned to lend to Triskelion efforts. They had stayed clear of the war with Eastfall, mostly, with the exception of a few defense campaigns to protect neighboring lands whom they relied upon for trade.

“What are the chances, do you think?” Peter whispered, nudging a finger into the hammock above him.

They hung in the outer room of the captain’s cabin. There were two private bedrooms in the quarters, but their captain insisted upon giving the second to the only woman aboard. Lady Erica had posed no complaints, which put her king and prince in hammocks in a private dining room. The rest had hammocks below deck with the crew.

Derek shifted in his hammock above. “Of St. Martin lending her army?” He blew out a noisy breath. “They tend not to stray so far from their own lands, I know. Still, I have heard that Queen Lydia is a good and just woman. Our father was not well-liked, but Deucalion’s actions have been barbarous.”

It was dark as pitch in the cabin. The hammocks swayed as the ship creaked in rhythm around them. A calm night, the captain had promised. Perhaps for the sea, Peter thought, but it would be some time before he saw another calm night.

“I haven’t yet had the chance to tell you,” he murmured into the black. “I’m sorry about your mother. When I heard, I… well, I thought I had lost you as well, of course. I am truly heartbroken.”

After a long silence, he heard Derek sniffle above him. “Me, as well.”

Peter hesitated before asking, “Were you there? When it happened?”

“I wish,” Derek whispered. He sounded almost like he had as a boy. “I don’t know if she was up late with grandfather or if she merely heard the commotion from her chambers. I was having a drink with the guards on the other end of the castle. She was dead by the time I knew of anything. The guards got me out and on a horse, and then Prince Ennis’s men were upon me.”

“They say she died defending our father.”

“She was stupid,” Derek said, the word coming out harsh. Then, softer, “And brave. And good-hearted. And loyal.”

“You’re a lot like her,” Peter said, a smile settling on his lips.

* * *

  
  


The seas became rough in the still-dark morning on the third day, churning their ship in relentless swells that left most of their party green of face for the remainder of the day. Only Isaac, who had grown up sailing Nematon Lake, had not taken his turn bent over the side of the ship. Both he and the crew seemed to delight in their discomfort.

“I grant Liam has the most impressive arc and velocity,” he declared from his seat atop a water barrel, “but I should be remiss not to remark that Lord Stiles has the most pitiful moans.”

Peter walked up behind Isaac and gave him a good shove off the barrel. “I’m glad this is so amusing to you,” he grumbled.

It didn’t help that they had drunk nothing but wine and ale since departing Eastfall. He had made for one of the water barrels the first day, but Boyd caught him before he could dip his cup into it.

“Trust me,” he had cautioned, “I wouldn’t.”

So the lot of them had been alternately parched, drunk, and queasy for near three days.

“Here,” Peter murmured, passing a cup of ale to Stiles. Liam’s stomach was still raging a ways down the ship from them, but Stiles seemed to have reached the end of it.

Stiles took the cup and an eager mouthful.

“Slow,” Peter cautioned. “Just rinse your mouth out.”

It wasn’t that he was concerned, of course. He simply owed a courtesy that Stiles had paid him earlier that day. Nothing more.

Nodding, Stiles swished the drink about, then spat it over the side. “Thank you.”

The ship lurched beneath their feet, and Peter caught hold of the handrail, placing a steadying hand in the middle of Stiles’s back. “I hate this damned ship,” he muttered.

Humming his agreement, Stiles replied, “I’m starting to think I should have let you kill me at Eastfall.”

Peter leaned against the handrail and folded his arms over his chest. He thought about the morning before they left, how close he had come to letting rage overtake him. “I acted brutishly,” he admitted.

Stiles slumped forward on the rail, the cup clutched tightly between his hands. He took a slow sip. “However directly or indirectly,” he said, “I caused your sister’s death. And, until I was able to produce him, your nephew, as far as you knew. I understand the wrath you felt.”

Sparing a look around them, Peter verified that none were in hearing range. This conversation, he knew, was long overdue. “I wish I could say it was that fact that caused me the greatest heartache, that you were the cause of their murders.” He fixed his gaze on the deck. “It was the betrayal, though. The thought that you had orchestrated my affections for your own ends.”

Beside him, Stiles made a choked sort of noise. At first, Peter thought maybe he was going to be sick again. A glance revealed, however, that he was simply fighting back a show of emotion. His voice came out strained as he spoke, “I do not know to convince you that I did not.” Stiles dropped his head low, forehead resting on the handrail. “I lied to you, and that is unacceptable. I lied about who I was and how I came to be in your life. I lied about the poisoning attempt. What I felt for you was never a lie.”

Peter made to inform him of the trouble in his words, but it seemed Stiles did not need informing.

“However,” Stiles continued, “I have lied about so many things and lied well. You have no reason to believe me.”

For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Finally, Peter pushed off the hand rail and took a few steps away. He paused, looked back at Stiles. He had not moved from his weary slump, the angles of his shoulders poking up sharply beneath his tunic. “I want to believe you,” he confessed, “which is all the more reason I should not.”

* * *

  
  


The night before their arrival in St. Martin found their party in a circle around the captain’s dining table, all of them furiously drunk.

“So,” Erica slurred, “who do we have?” Her hands groped across the table, coming to rest on an empty supper bowl. “Here is Triskelion.” She placed it out in front of her, then peered across the table to her left. “Which makes… Liam. Liam, your cup is the Fens.”

Liam frown at his cup, then looked up at Erica, then back at his cup. “Can’t it be Dunbar?”

“No,” Peter grumbled, “because Dunbar will not grant us its army.”

“Plus, you’re northwest,” Erica insisted. “That makes you the Fens, and Isaac St. Martin.” She nodded at Isaac, who sat at Liam’s left.

“I’ve got an army,” Isaac offered brightly.

“St. Martin has an army,” Peter corrected. “Lahey is giving us nothing.”

“But I’m not Lahey,” Isaac reminded him, wagging his cup of wine in front of him. “I’m St. Martin.”

“Have I got an army?” Liam asked. “If I’m the Fens, have I got an army?”

Boyd looked at Erica with a grin. “Well, my lady?”

She jabbed an elbow into his side. “You’ve got my guard, at least. That’s fifty men. Remains to be seen if I can persuade more from Father.”

“Hey, Scott, give ol’ St. Martin a fill-up, hm?” Isaac said, sliding the island nation across the table.

Scott, on Erica’s other side, took the cup and poured the rest of a bottle into it. “If that’s Triskelion, I’m the Beacon!” he announced.

Deaton sat to Peter’s right, chin resting on his hand. “Whose army also depends upon pleading with one’s father,” he noted. “I’m seeing a pattern.”

“Boyd, pass St. Martin to Isaac? It’s too full now.”

“And I doubt House McCall intends to send any aid from the Southlands,” Peter added.

Boyd carefully passed St. Martin down the line. “No, but he has Argentus,” he said.

“ _Actually_ , Peter has Argentus,” Erica argued, “geographically speaking.”

Peter stared at Boyd. Then, he turned and stared at Scott. Then Stiles, who sat between Peter and Scott.

“It’s not a sure thing,” Stiles said, mush-mouthed and gesturing excessively as he spoke. “Scott was raised as a ward of the Beacon, and my father arranged his betrothal to Lady Allison Argent.”

“And you think he’s going to persuade the Argents out of…” Peter struggled for an adequate explanation. “…out of sixty years of _loathing_? Lord Argent _loathes_ the Hales.”

Derek, who Peter had honestly thought had nodded off against Boyd’s shoulder, lifted his head and said, “Lord Argent is dead.” He frowned. “Well, the old one. They got a new one. Chris, Gerard’s son.”

Renewing his bewildered expression, Peter looked around the whole table. “ _What!_ Was anyone going to tell me?”

“I just told you,” Derek replied. “I forget you’ve been… been locked up in a tower like a… like a…” He yawned and seemed to lose the thought.

“How did he die?” Deaton asked.

Liam had spilled a bit of wine from the Fens and seemed to be trying to rub it into the table cracks. “I think he was just old,” he said.

Isaac snorted. “Everyone’s old to you.”

“ _Anyhow_ ,” Erica interrupted, “the new Lord Argent is much more…” She waved a hand, searching for a word.

“Gracious?” Scott offered.

“Less evil,” Boyd suggested.

“Persuade-able!” Stiles declared.

Scott bumped shoulders with Stiles. “If I’m the Beacon, does that make you Lahey?”

“I don’t want to be Lahey!”

Isaac scowled. “Hey, fuck you.”

“You should be so lucky.”

Liam had slumped forward onto the table. “Do Deaton, Boyd and Prince Derek get to be anything?”

“Deaton’s on the northern shore,” Erica reasoned. “Derek’s… asleep again, I think.”

“Boyd could be Vernon Bend,” Isaac suggested.

“I _am_ the Bend,” Boyd sighed.

“The Bend is too poorly guarded from the borderlands,” Deaton explained. “They cannot afford to send their men to Triskelion.”

“Derek can be the Bend,” Boyd conceded.

Peter blinked at the insane lot of them. “Let me get this right,” he said. “We’ve got Argentus, _maybe_.” He pointed at his own cup. “The Beacon, _maybe_.” He pointed at Scott. “St. Martin, _maybe_.” Isaac, then Liam. “And fifty men from the Fens plus an army, _maybe_.”

Stiles leaned back in his chair, draining the remainder of wine from his cup. “Correct,” he said into the empty cup.

“Well, then.” He snorted and leaned against Deaton. “It sounds like we all maybe won’t die.”

* * *

  
  


The first and only time Peter had visited St. Martin previously was just before the war, in his nineteenth year, for the coronation of Queen Lydia. His father, who had always despised St. Martin’s political independence, had machinations to join their kingdoms by wedding his son to their new queen.

Peter remembered standing in the great cathedral in the capitol, a massive dome of stained glass and crushed seashells. It overlooked the narrow strait that separated the island from the mainland. A chorus, accompanied by flouters and fine ladies seated at harps, echoed through the chamber in ethereal chants Peter did not understand.

He had imagined what Queen Lydia might look like, had heard that she had hair the red of a flame, skin fair as sea foam and eyes the color of meadow grass. The doors to the hall opened, and all seemed to hold their breath as through them stepped a girl of no more than ten years of age.

* * *

  
  


The intervening decade had molded Queen Lydia into a fine woman.

Their party did not receive an audience with her on the day they made shore, which suited Peter just fine. It gave them all a chance to nurse their wine-sore heads and glut themselves on fresh water. The following morning, however, a stiff-mannered attendant fetched each member of their motley band from their respective guest chambers, then led them together to a council room on the other end of the castle.

Past a wooden door inlaid with sea glass, Queen Lydia sat alone at the head of a long stone table. The full, cherubic cheeks of youth had thinned, and her lips had become fuller. Her hair, the same flaming red that Peter remembered, had been neatly piled atop her head in a nest of curls, held in place by a pristine golden crown. Her gown gaped low, baring her shoulders and the pale swell of her breasts, nearly indecent. Just above them hung an outrageously large emerald.

She stood as Peter entered at the front of the pack. “King Peter,” she greeted primly. Rows of silent men dressed in robes stood along the wall behind her. Council members, he supposed.

Reminding himself that, by rights, they were equals in rank, Peter kept his chin high, no sign of deference. “Queen Lydia. I extend my sincerest thanks for your hospitality. It is a pleasure to see you again after so long.”

Gesturing toward the chair at the opposite head of the council table, Lydia sat. “My mother mentioned that you were present for my coronation,” she replied. “I apologize, but I do not recall.”

“You were quite young and had just lost your father. It’s understandable.” An attendant pulled out Peter’s chair and he sat. Behind him, the others filed in, but all remained standing. From his position, Peter could not turn back to see them without appearing improper.

Lydia’s sharp eyes flitted from one to the next. After a long pause, she said, “Here in St. Martin, we believe in the holiness of light and color. We adorn our buildings with glass so it might cast rainbows, which we hold particularly sacred.” She smiled, and Peter could not decide if the expression comforted or terrified him. “It appears you have brought me your own.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning.”

With a graceful, sweeping gesture, she explained, “Why, your house colors. Red from the Red Fens. Red-yellow of Dunbar. Yellow from the Beacon. Green of Vernon Bend. Blue of Lahey.” She hummed and traced a finger across the surface of the table. “Remind me, King Peter, what is the color of Triskelion?”

“Black,” he replied. Beneath the table, his fists clenched so tightly his fingernails bit into the skin of his palms. This did not bode well.

“Yours has never been a throne able to thrive on its own merit,” Lydia said. “Here in St. Martin, we find virtue in self-reliance. Our lands are not vast, but we tend them well and cultivate their wealth. We hold our people close and defend them as kin. Triskelion relies upon its surrounding territories to sustain itself, and whether it pays them back in loyalty or protection seems to rely upon…” She gave a light, cruel laugh. “...well, I don’t know. Perhaps the direction of the wind.”

Peter bore her criticisms with a clenched jaw and a steeled heart. “I do not come here asking for your fealty,” he explained. “St. Martin has been independent for generations, and I respect its sovereignty.”

“No, you come here asking for an army,” she sighed.

“Yes.”

“Then I’m afraid your journey is for naught.” Queen Lydia’s expression fell to a stern finality. “St. Martin has no interest in becoming embroiled in petty border disputes or the political squabbling of foreign states. I understand your father’s death has been a blow to your family, but it has been a relief to the peace. Why should we lend our men’s lives to put another Hale on the throne? So you might continue to alternately neglect and then beat into submission your dependent territories?”

A voice rang out from behind him: “Your majesty!”

Stiles stepped forward until Peter could see him out of the corner of his left eye. He bowed low.

“I am Lord Mieczysław of the Beacon. It is upon my design that King Peter has made his journey here. I beg that you permit me speak, that my aspirations would not be in vain.”

Lydia tipped her head to the side curiously, then made a permissive gesture. “Go on.”

Stiles stood tall, his hands folded behind his back, chest puffed forward. “For five years, I have cursed the name ‘King Peter,’” he began. “King Peter was the name of a devil who invaded my home, disgraced my father, and tortured my mother until she went mad. To me, his name became a synonym for evil. I swore that I would do whatever it took to destroy that malevolent villain and his family with him.” Peter could hear a tremble in his voice, but he never stopped, never hesitated.

“I have now spent long months becoming acquainted with the man beside me, whom I expected to hate. Whom I expected to destroy. I can tell you with absolute certainty that this man bears no resemblance to his father except for his name. He is truly a good and just man.”

It took all of Peter’s concentration to control his response, to keep his eyes fixed on the queen and not to turn to gaze on Stiles’s face or, perhaps, to leap from his chair entirely and sweep Stiles into his arms.

Another figure approached from his right. “Your highness,” Erica said, “I am Lady Erica of the Red Fens. I beg permission to offer my testimony as well.” She waited for a gesture of consent, then went on: “The late King Peter had a reputation for his cruelty toward the feminine sex. As he brutalized Lady Claudia of the Beacon, he violated many others. Common women, who could not refuse him nor make objection to his actions.”

“When first I met the then-Prince Peter, I had dressed as my brother, hoping to spare him a war he could not survive. When I was found out, he showed me not only dignity, not only kindness, but respect. Confidence. He allowed me to train like any man might. He fought at my side as an equal for six years. He is not his father’s son, and I am proud to call him my king.”

Bit by bit, he saw the stone lifting from Queen Lydia’s expression. She did not wait for the next of his party to ask permission before giving her wordless assent.

“Sir Boyd of Vernon Bend, your majesty. I never met the late King Peter, but I know his son as well as I know myself. I went to war young and fought beside my new king for near ten years. Though I am below him in station, he trained me and cared for me as a brother might. I have laid down my life for him before, and I would do it again, any day, without question. He is a strong leader and a compassionate teacher. There are some who might feel impertinent calling their king a friend, but I hold no such unease.”

Peter did his best to fight off the clench of emotion stirring in his chest, but felt a hotness behind his eyes. Surely, the emotion had begun to show on his face.

“Sir Isaac of Lahey, your majesty. The old King Peter beheaded my father, but I’m still here vouching for the new one. I feel quite confident that he would never behead me.”

Before he could stop it, a huff of laughter escaped Peter’s lips, but instead of judgment or displeasure, he saw a smile blooming on the queen’s lips.

She held up a hand. “I believe that is enough testimony. Any more and your king might weep.” Lydia gazed at Peter again with that sharp, assessing gaze. “Tell me, King Peter, what is the real reason you want to lead my army to Triskelion? To retake your rightful throne?”

Peter shook his head at once. “No, your highness. Until four days ago I did not think I could ever hope to see my family throne again. However, my niece is currently betrothed against her will to a man who, if the tales are to be believed, would rival my own father in cruelty. I fear for her and her sister. I fear for our kingdom. If it is your aim to keep another King Peter Hale from the throne, Prince Ennis Eastfall is his true successor in spirit.”

Queen Lydia stood, and Peter stood at once to join her. “I shall allow you all to return to your chambers,” she said, “and have maids sent to fit you with clothing suitable for tonight’s festivities.” She seemed pleased by the confusion on their faces. “Tonight we shall feast to celebrate our new alliance.”

* * *

  
  


“I’ve thought of another reason I wish to retake Triskelion,” Peter said, leaning over Stiles’s shoulder. Despite yesterday’s declarations that he would drink nothing but water for the rest of his life, he had partaken a bit too freely in wine.

Stiles turned to him, his smile suddenly too close to Peter’s own. “And what’s that?”

“I want desperately to live somewhere with _no fish._ ”

They both turned to look at the decadent spread of food across the table which was, indeed, heavily laden with sea fare, though pies and desserts had started to intervene in the open spaces. “Come now,” Stiles laughed, “the tuna was quite pleasant. You shouldn’t have started with the shark.”

“I thought that _was_ the tuna.”

Another bark of laughter. Peter found himself rediscovering his compulsion to create the sound. “How big do you think tuna get?”

“I don’t know,” Peter replied, trying to be petulant around a grin. “These ocean fish are monstrous.”

* * *

  
  


After dessert, Peter found himself on the dance floor, Queen Lydia poised delicately in his arms. She wore a stunningly embroidered white gown, the skirt of which she had to hold up with one hand. “I apologize, your highness, if I am not well-practiced,” she said. “I do not often accept invitations to dance.”

“Your majesty is doing quite well,” he assured her. “I have heard that you are guarded against any indication of romance. Understandable, as a husband would have a throne above your own.”

She hummed in agreement and waited until a more complex turn of the dance had passed before continuing. “My mother recalled to me that your father made overtures at marriage between us when I was still a child.”

Peter laughed softly. “You need not fear I would continue his aspirations in that regard.”

“No,” she conceded. “If rumors are to be believed, then I imagine not.” Lydia looked upon him warmly, reassuring that she held no disgust for his preferences. “My most trusted general, whom I am lending you, also intends never to wed. His name is Sir Jackson.”

Understanding this for the offer it was, Peter replied, “Thank you, your majesty, but I am quite capable of finding my own trouble in love.”

“Is there another who holds your heart?”

It took a moment for Peter to form his response, during which time he missed two steps and nearly trod upon her royal toes. “Perhaps,” he replied. “I fear things are not so simple at this time. In any case, I have a war campaign to manage. Such matters can surely wait.”

“War is a dangerous occupation,” Lydia deftly countered. “It seems to me that, compared to a moment of mortal peril, there is no time in which it would be more essential to make peace in one’s personal affairs or to make known one’s affections.”

Peter ducked his head to hide a smile. “Your majesty is both beautiful and wise.”

Lydia stepped back and spun around him in a long, graceful circle before returning to his arms. “Now, I wonder which of these ragabrash lords of yours is the one who troubles you so. I dare hope not the one who plotted to kill you.”

“Keen as well, I fear,” he laughed.

* * *

  
  


The next morning, his head still throbbing with wine, Peter woke early to the sound of Deaton rifling about his chambers. “What in the world are you doing?”

“Good, you’re awake,” he said.

Peter sat up and saw that Deaton was not only dressed but was dressed for travel, in riding boots and a cloak. He was packing his few possessions into a bag. “You’re leaving? Where?” He swung his legs over the side of the bed, trying to shake off his sleep-stupor.

“Lord Scott has decided to ride out this morning. To reach Argentus is six days’ of hard riding, and to bring its army to Triskelion will take longer still. If we have any hope of bringing their army in time, he will need to act with haste.”

“And you have elected to go with him?” Peter demanded. “Have you forgotten who this man is to us?”

“An ally,” Deaton snapped. He cinched the top of the bag, then looked at Peter with a softened expression. “An ally that we need quite desperately. It does not make sense to send him on his own. He needs someone who can negotiate on _your_ behalf. That is my aim.”

He had not prepared himself to be separated from Deaton. It seemed too sudden, too frightening. They had been apart many times when Peter went to war, but he had always depended on Deaton’s prudence in matters of state. “Shouldn’t Derek go, then? He is a Hale.”

“Derek is in no condition for such a journey. He needs a few more days’ rest.”

“What if I need you?” Peter demanded.

Deaton smiled and crossed the room to stand before him. He cupped Peter’s face in his hand. “You do need me, Peter. I go because you need me to.”

Peter pulled Deaton close, holding him tightly. He felt strong arms around his back.

“About the terms of negotiation,” Deaton began.

Drawing back, Peter patted his shoulder. “I trust your judgment, friend. Any words you speak, you speak for me. You speak for Triskelion. You may have difficult decisions ahead of you, but I stand by them, whatever they will be.”

Deaton clasped a hand around the back of Peter’s neck and squeezed. “My king,” he said.

“My brother,” Peter replied.

* * *

  
  


After he had dressed and broken his fast, Peter found himself again in the council room. A massive map lay across it with lengths of string at the side and chess pieces set on each site of a potential allied army. “How much time do you need to ready your men?” he asked, looking across the table at Lydia’s generals: Sir Jackson, a younger son of Fort Whitt who had been at the art of war since he was old enough to wield a sword, and Sir Parrish, who had humble beginnings but rose through the ranks on his own merit.

Sir Jackson scoffed, “We can have them out in an hour if you want an army of ten, brandishing broom handles.”

Sir Parrish gave his fellow a warning look, then answered in a warmer tone, “Your highness, the longer you give us, the better prepared and armored our troops will be. Sir Jackson’s men on the mainland can be prepared rather quickly, but mine are better armored for coastal campaigns and will need more time.”

Peter took up a length of string to measure the course their armies would take.

Behind him, Boyd gently corrected, “They should avoid that stretch, my king. The slope to the river grows steep and is treacherous for horses.”

Nodding, Peter adjusted the string. “Eight days for an army,” he sighed. “If we gave you four days to prepare...” He frowned as he ran the days in his head. “No. You would arrive the very day before my niece’s wedding, which would not give time for rest or to arrange our ranks.”

“We could ride to meet them half a day out,” Stiles suggested. He stepped up beside Peter, taking a second length of string and tracing a route from the Beacon, across the Martin River, then in an arc north around Triskelion. “We would need to stay out of range of scouts, follow the valleys.”

“That’s four days,” Peter protested.

“Three,” Stiles argued. “Our army is smaller and more accustomed to the terrain.”

“Four – we have to ford a river.”

Stiles scowled and huffed. “Four days, then.”

“Do you forget that we still need time to reach the Beacon ourselves _and_ to persuade your father to grant us his army _and_ grant him time to ready said army?”

Erica appeared at his other side, bumping her hip into his. “Oh, let me!”

Peter shot her a stern glare, aware of how scandalized the generals must look.

She gave a nervous laugh and fell into a clumsy approximation of a curtsy. “My king,” she added.

Rolling his eyes, Peter took a half step back from the map, allowing her to add another string, this one tracing the St. Martin river from the sea to Vernon Bend. “If we leave by riverboat this evening, we can reach the Bend by tomorrow evening. There, Sir Boyd will, I’m sure, _graciously_ grant us overnight accommodations and then horses. He and I can make the quick ride back to the Fens to rouse my men while you and Lord Stiles continue on to The Beacon overland. Two days’ ride, at most.”

She turned, folding her hands behind her back, and smiled at Peter, then at Stiles. “So long as you are quick at persuasion, that should leave plenty of time to meet St. Martin in the north and more than adequate time for the Fens to cross the river at the Bend and meet with both parties.”

Erica had set her sights on knighthood for so long that Peter worried that, upon attaining such her goal, her aspirations would turn to world domination.

“Very well,” he said, and turned to the generals. “Depart in four days’ time and meet us on the second Sunday.” He reached forward and plucked the chess piece – a queen – from St. Martin and placed it north of Triskelion.

“As you say, your highness,” Sir Parrish replied.

Sir Jackson looked behind Peter and frowned. “And what of the rest of your party?”

Peter turned to see Isaac, who was picking dirt from his fingernails, and Liam, shifting from foot to foot as if perhaps he needed the privy. Behind them, Derek sat in a chair, resting his injured ribs and looking on attentively.

“Nephew,” Peter said with a grin. “You are to ride out alongside Sirs Parrish and Jackson. I leave Sirs Isaac and Liam under _your_ command.”

Derek slowly turned to look at them, then dragged his eyes back to Peter. He looked a bit like he wished that arrow had finished him off after all. “Thank you,” he ground out in the least thankful tone Peter had ever witnessed, “my king.”

“Oh, don’t look so dour,” Stiles said. “At least _you_ don’t have to get back on a boat.”

* * *

  
  


That night they slept on bedrolls under an open sky, the moon almost blinding in her brilliance. The river rolled gently beneath them. Above them, the wind caught tight in the sails, tugging to the east. At the back of the boat, he could hear their oarsman singing softly to keep himself awake and perhaps to bid his passengers to rest.

“ _When the nightingale sings,  
The woods wax green  
Leaf and grass and blossoms spring,  
In April, you see.  
And love is to my heart gone  
With a spear so keen  
Night and day my blood it drains  
My heart, to death, in pain.”_

Looking to his right, Peter saw Boyd’s broad back, rising and falling in the syrup-slow rhythm of sleep. Though blocked from view, he knew that Erica slept on the other side of him. They had passed many nights like this one, and he knew the quiet wheeze of her snore.

He turned to his left and found Stiles’s wide, dark eyes, fixed upon him.

“ _I have loved all this past year  
__S_ _o that I may love no more.  
I have sighed many a sigh  
__Beloved, at thy door.  
My love is never nearer thee,  
And that me grieveth sore.  
Sweet loved-one, think on me,  
That I loved you before._ _”_

Stiles slipped a hand into the narrow space between their bodies, palm up.

“ _Sweet loved one, I pray thee  
For one loving speech.  
While I live in this wide world,  
None other will I seek.  
With thy love, my sweet beloved,  
My bliss though mightest stir.  
A sweet kiss of thy mouth, beloved  
Mightest be my cure.”_

Peter laid his hand on top, intertwined their fingers.

“ _And if it be thy will,  
Make sure that others see.  
So much I think upon thee  
As the woods wax green.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song at the end is a modernized version of a real song called When The Nyhtegale Singes. You can hear a very lovely rendition of the original Middle English song [here.](http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/nyhtegale.mp3)


	7. The Consort

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Allies are dispersing to gather their forces. Peter and Stiles ride to The Beacon to ask for Lord Noak's support.

According to history, Vernon Bend had started as nothing but a mill. The miller, who was its namesake, saw that travelers spent hours of treacherous labor fording the Martin River or were taken in by the extortion of greedy ferrymen. A bridge could not easily be constructed to cross the river, else it would impede the high-sailed riverboats. So Vernon set himself to work designing and constructing a great drawbridge, on which he could charge tolls for passage to riders and riverboats both.

The tolls made Vernon a rich man in short time, and his small stone mill was expanded into a large stone house. Then, as people began to gather around Vernon’s little bend in the river – for his was the only proper bridge until Triskelion – he found himself de facto mayor of a new little village. Needing space to conduct village business, his home was expanded further into a sort of manor. A generation later, when the town required better defense from nearby raiders, his children and grandchildren added walls and stone turrets from which they could keep watch.

The result was that the city of Vernon Bend did not have a castle so much as it had a deranged, overgrown stone mansion which, by means of several generations’ expansions, had sprawled to cover more than half an acre of land without ever rising more than three stories in height.

* * *

  
  


Thanks to unfavorable winds, their boat did not make shore until late in the night on the second day. They had spent long hours rowing, poling, and even on a few occasions walking along shore to tow the boat against the current.

The servants that greeted them seemed as weary and bedraggled as they, all having been roused from their beds to tend to their arrival. “Has my lord a preference in bedchambers for his guests?” one asked.

Boyd yawned, seeming to sway on his feet. “Whichever are closest,” he replied.

He and Erica were dispatched to their rooms first. Peter’s steps faltered outside of his own. He caught Stiles by the elbow. “Would you stay here?” he asked.

The exhaustion on Stiles’s face made space for surprise. Uncertainty, too.

“To sleep,” Peter clarified.

Stiles bit his lower lip and ducked his head. In the dim candlelight, Peter might have simply imagined the blush on his cheeks as he said, “To sleep, then, my king.”

* * *

  
  


Sleep they did, the very instant their heads touched their pillows. The next thing Peter was aware of was a rude stream of sunlight rushing at his eyes. He groaned and turned his face down, tucking it against something which felt too solid to be a pillow.

“Begging your pardon, your majesty, my lord,” came the aged rasp of an old man’s voice. “You said you wanted to be roused for an early start, they told me.”

Peter frowned and pulled back just enough to see that the thing which was not his pillow was, in fact, a shoulder. Stiles’s shoulder, to be exact. His bedmate’s eyes were open, though the misery behind them as he glared at the bed canopy suggested it was not his wish. “You did say that,” he muttered. “Why did you say that?”

Groaning again, Peter rolled away and sat at the edge of the bed. They had slept less than half a night. “Thank you for waking us.”

Their servant this morning, by the looks of him, had at least ten times as many years in age as he did teeth left in his mouth or hairs left on his head. He looked familiar. “There is food on the table ready for you,” he said. “Suitable riding clothes will be provided forthwith. Sir Boyd has made request of your majesty that you meet him in the armory when you are ready to depart.”

“Do I know you?” Peter asked.

The man appeared delighted by the question. “I had the pleasure of waiting on your majesty some years ago, when you took respite here from the war.”

Peter squinted, recalling the time. He had taken a nasty fall from his horse during battle and recovered here in Vernon Bend, attended to by… “Felim? Was it?” he guessed.

“Yes, that’s me.” He bobbled his head. “Will your majesty be needing anything else?”

“No, thank you. You’ve prepared us quite nicely.”

Felim left, and he felt a pair of lips against his shoulder, where the loose neck of his nightshirt gaped open. “You know that’s unusual, don’t you?” Stiles asked, voice low and sleep-rough against his skin. “For royalty to recall the name of a servant, years later?”

For a moment, Peter felt like he was back in Eastfall, weeks ago when he and Stiles had last shared such casual intimacy. He didn’t fight it, though he waved off the comment. “The man waited on me for a month while I was abed with an injury,” he explained.

The lips traveled up to the back of his neck. “Even so.”

“I’m good with names,” Peter insisted.

Stiles’s arms wrapped around his shoulders, his hands coming to rest in the center of his chest. “You’re good with people,” he said against Peter’s ear. “There’s no denying it. I’m already working on your history: King Peter the Considerate.”

Peter turned to look at Stiles, so close that another inch would press their lips together. “And where are you in this history?” he asked.

Those soft lips parted, then twisted into a lopsided smile. Stiles pulled back enough to duck his head, peeking at Peter through his lashes. “Wherever my king will have me.”

In one movement, Peter caught Stiles around the middle and pressed him back onto the bed, hovering over him. He leaned down and finally captured the kiss he had been craving. It was all he remembered: soft, wet, yielding. The stale taste of morning and the fluttering huff of Stiles’s chest beneath him as he licked his way inside. When he pulled back, they were both short of breath and unable to quit their grins. “If I did not have less than a fortnight to command an attack on a castle, I would have ideas about you this morning,” he admitted.

Stiles leaned up and kissed him once more. “If I did not have two days astride a horse ahead of me, I would persuade you to those ideas nonetheless.”

Peter laughed and forced himself to get off the bed and away from temptation. While they broke their fast, he recalled the injury which had placed him in Felim’s care before. A chambermaid interrupted the story to bring them their clothes, and Peter finished it while they dressed.

Boyd awaited them in the armory, where he had already set aside mail and padding that should fit them. “The Lady Erica is selecting the horses,” he explained. “You know how particular she gets about her mounts.” Then, at once, he seemed to realize a double meaning to his words and looked away.

“Still hasn’t given in, then?” Peter teased. He strapped a sword about his waist, but took a flail as well.

Busying himself with putting on his own mail, Boyd asked, “Are you really going to knight her?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?” Peter tipped his head to the side. “Why?”

Boyd took his time righting his mail, tugging it down at the waist and sleeves before he lifted his eyes to meet Peter’s at last. “She agreed that she would marry me, but only after she is knighted.”

A broad smile spread across Peter’s face, and he stepped up to clap Boyd on the shoulder. “When we meet again before the battle, I will knight her on sight,” he promised.

* * *

  
  


They rode hard nearly the entire day, stopping only at the unbearable heat of midday for food and to replenish their water. Erica had selected a pair of fine palfreys for them from the Vernon Bend stables, which had made for faster and easier riding than they might have otherwise achieved. By the time they made camp that evening, they were well on-schedule to reach The Beacon the next day.

“There was a time,” Peter mused as he stooped over the fire to stir their stew, “when I traveled on war campaigns with servants who made camp and cooked. Now I travel with fake servants who can’t even tend the horses.”

Stiles lay sprawled on the grass at the edge of camp, one arm draped over his eyes. “I told you, it’s no use talking to me,” he said. “I am dead, and the dead can’t hear.”

“The dead can’t have any supper either,” Peter reminded him.

Rolling onto his side, Stiles whined as he gazed plaintively at the stew pot. “I can’t recall the last time I rode so hard for so long,” he protested.

“One could make an argument for my birthday last month.”

“You’re horrid,” Stiles declared, but he finally pushed himself up and headed for the horses.

By the time he returned, Peter was sat upon a log with two bowls ready. He passed the second to Stiles. “I am relieved to see you resurrected,” he commented. The stew was bland and watery, but they ate it all and scraped the bottom of the stew pot for the remains. When they were done, Peter raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you intend to make me scrub the bowls out as well?”

Stiles fell backward off the log, landing on his back with his arms spread, eyes closed. “I’m dead!”

Peter laughed and shoved at his knee. “If this is the sort of fealty a king can expect from The Beacon, you can keep it.”

An eye peeked open. “You don’t mean that.”

“No.” He kept his hand on Stiles’s knee, thumb brushing over the light linen of his stockings. “Will you return to The Beacon after?” he asked, brow furrowing. “I mean… I understand, you have your father to attend to. Duties you left there.”

The other eye opened as well, his expression softened. “I told you this morning: I will go wherever my king will have me.”

Peter offered a hand and pulled Stiles back onto the log, then leaned in and kissed him. “Mm… I think I’ll have you...” he said against his lips.

“Have me what?”

He pulled back just enough to smirk at Stiles as he pressed their bowls into his hands. “I’ll have you washing the dishes.” Peter pecked his lips again, then stood to begin packing their food away.

Stiles got to the task, but lamented as he did, “I’m in love with a cruel, cruel man.”

Peter stilled. He had just flung a rope over a tree branch, and the free end swung down and hit him in the chest. He turned slowly and saw Stiles bent over the fire, scraping bits of food into it from the stew pot. “That’s the first time you’ve said that,” Peter told him.

“That you’re cruel? It’s only a jest, Peter.”

“No, that you love me.”

Stiles’s hands fumbled, and the pot fell into the fire. “Damn it,” he muttered, quickly darting his hand forward to pluck it from the flames. Once it fell safely to the dirt outside the fire pit, he looked up at Peter, cheeks stained red. “I said it before. You were drunk. You didn’t believe me.”

Peter recalled that drunken night at Eastfall in hazy fits and starts. “I believe you now.” Why else would Stiles have gone to such lengths to help him?

Stiles dropped to a crouch, elbows resting on his knees. “Do you forgive me, then?”

Peter did not know how to answer, and desperately wished he could go ask for Deaton’s steadying perspective, knowing his own was clouded with affections, whether or not those affections were wise. He did not want to be made a fool again. More than that, he wanted Stiles.

“Will you lie to me again?” he asked.

Stiles tipped his head to the side, a shadow of a smirk on his lips. “Probably,” he admitted. “As you will probably find occasion to lie to me, if we are together as long as I hope. But I can promise never to lie about my feelings for you. I can promise that I love you, and that from here forward, I will only lie on your behalf and in your favor.”

Ducking his head, Peter smiled, for this he believed far more easily than if Stiles had made a plain vow of truthfulness. “Then I do,” he agreed. “God help me, but I do forgive you.”

Lifting the stew pot, Stiles resumed his duties. “It is your considerate nature, my king.”

Peter finished hanging their food, then went about preparing camp for night. By the time Stiles finished cleaning the dishes, the clearing had fallen into the shadow of night.

He was lying flat on his bedroll, eyes closed, when a weight settled over his hips. Stiles’s legs bracketed him on either side. In the tree-filtered gleam of moonlight, Peter could only just make out the glint of eyes, the angle of a cheek and spread of shoulders. Stiles bent forward for a kiss devastating in its sincerity and enthralling in its placidity. Hands dipped beneath cloth, roved over ride-sore flesh. A gasp slipped between their mouths, and Peter could not have said who had made it.

Soon they had their clothes shifted just enough that they could press their cocks together. Stiles sat up, and Peter felt a drip of spit to ease the way. Their hands found an equal rhythm which seemed to follow the noisy rasp of their breath. Peter felt lost, suspended in the cradle of dark and the arch of pleasure. The two of them, heaving in a dance they had never learned yet knew by heart, caught between the unyielding fortitude of earth and the weightless perpetuity of sky.

They lay together, breathless, once they were spent. Stiles curled against his arm, a hand flat over his heart.

Peter whispered, “You have been a strange gift, my love.”

* * *

  
  


The next day’s ride revealed that they had made better time than expected. The woods opened to grazing land. Small clusters of houses sat perched on hilltops, haphazard farmland crawling down into the valleys. The sun was not yet overhead when they sighted the massive pyre atop a hill in the distance. Despite the heat, they pressed on, straining the horses until they reached the manor gatehouse.

Beacon Manor, while not humble in size, was dwarfed five times over by the pyre. What had once been a simple wooden construction had been elevated and fortified in stone over centuries with treacherously shallow stairs winding around its base. Peter had seen it many times from afar, but had never been near enough to truly marvel at its height.

“Do the people of The Beacon all suffer neck strain?” he asked, gaping up at the structure.

“Honestly, one almost forgets that it’s there,” Stiles replied.

A guard stepped forward as they approached, calling, “Halt!” but soon was near enough to recognize Stiles’s face. “Lord Stiles, welcome home! Your father will be much relieved to hear you have returned at last.”

“Thank you, Sir Graeme,” Stiles replied, and then muttered more quietly, “Let’s hope he remains so once all of the facts are before him.”

Sir Graeme led them through the gatehouse and into the spacious manor courtyard, well planted with flowers in front of the manor. Behind them, against the inner walls of the fortifications, Peter spied a modest training yard on one side, a stable on the other. He and Stiles dismounted in the center of the courtyard, and a mob of servants were upon them at once to take their bags inside and the horses away for tending. Most took time to remark with cheer upon Stiles’s return.

“I thought it was unusual to be so familiar with servants?” Peter remarked as they walked toward the manorhouse, a stately construction of yellow and orange brick adorned in ivy.

Stiles’s entire posture had shifted since dismounting his horse. His shoulders hung more relaxed, his stride gaining a youthful bounce. “Welcome to life in a small fiefdom. Everyone knows everything about everybody. Most of the servants either helped to raise me or were raised alongside me.”

“It sounds exhausting.”

Just before they reached the front steps, the massive front doors swung inward, and through them stepped a man strikingly alike Stiles in appearance, though his face had been creased by age and distress. He had sad eyes and a tired look about him, but something in his countenance echoed his son’s as well. A keen perception, perhaps, like all the world were a riddle to be solved.

Lord Noak hurried forward, and Stiles met him halfway up the stairs in a ferocious hug. When they parted, Stiles’s father grasped his shoulders and gave him a shake. “I was not expecting you, son. This is a wonderful surprise.”

Stiles shrugged off the grip with good humor. “I am glad to hear you are in good spirits, Father. There is someone I want you to meet.”

Peter had stopped at the bottom of the stairs, frozen and not sure how to approach this tender situation. He felt suddenly, achingly aware that this was the site of his own father’s abuses. Pushing down his discomfort, he stepped up and lifted his chin to look the man in the eye.

“Father, this is King Peter, the second.”

By the look on Lord Noak’s face, his son might as well have run him through with his sword. He gaped at Peter in disbelief.

“Lord Noak,” Peter said, at first intending to make a standard, stiff greeting. It dried on his tongue before he could speak it, though, and instead he found himself saying, “I cannot imagine the pain it must cause to have a Hale at your home again.” Against all decorum, he ducked his head in deference. Here, on this land, he could not possibly ask this man to bow to him. “I ask you grant me your hospitality, and I swear I shall not abuse it.”

Lord Noak cleared his throat and took a step back and away from Stiles. “If what my son says is true, and you are my king,” he replied, “then this land is also yours, by rights.”

“Still, it is your home,” Peter said, “and I ask, all the same.”

“Yes, well.” Stiles’s father would not look at either of them. “Stiles, you and our esteemed guest must be tired from your long journey. You should show him to guest chambers and ensure he is well attended to.” He looked like he might turn away without offering further address to Peter, then seemed to remember himself. “Your majesty, I apologize I have not excesses of hospitality to extend. I have many urgent matters to attend to this day and I was not expecting guests.”

As excuses went, it was feeble and gruffly delivered, but Peter did not challenge it. He did not feel hopeful for their prospects of gaining his army, however, as Lord Noak turned his back and went inside again.

“That’s not as bad as it could have gone,” Stiles offered.

Peter pinched the bridge of his nose. “I dread to think what you had imagined, then.”

* * *

  
  


Stiles’s chambers were a strange glimpse into a person that Peter realized, with some relief, he knew quite well. Servants had clearly been through to tidy it, but the space still held an air of familiar mania. A shelf in the sitting area held a modest assortment of books as well as wooden puzzles and other trinkets. Against a window sat a narrow desk, the top corner coated in wax stains. Scrolls and bits of parchments adorned the room chaotically. At the center of the room, before the fireplace where one might expect a couch or chairs, was a chess table with chairs on either side.

Back in Triskelion, Peter had a magnificent ivory chess set, half of the pieces gilded. Stiles’s set was more humble, wooden, but the pieces were finely carved. “Do you play well?” he asked.

Looking up, he saw that Stiles had already begun to shed his riding clothes, leaving his lean back bare for appreciation. “Twice as well as I play backgammon,” Stiles replied. That had been the only game set at their disposal in Eastfall. “So, well enough to trounce you.” He looked over his shoulder at Peter and winked.

His feet moved of their own volition, carrying him to stand behind Stiles. Peter wrapped his hands around his hips, pressed his lips to the curve of a shoulder. At once, Stiles went pliant in his arms, falling against his chest, his head tipping back to bare his throat. Peter took the invitation. He laid wet kisses up its length, tasting sweat and dirt from their long journey. One of his hands slid over Stiles’s stomach, then dipped inside the half-done laces of his riding breeches.

“Peter,” Stiles gasped.

Two rapid knocks came upon the door, which opened then without hesitation. “My lord, the kitchens have prepared for you – _oh my_!”

A gray-haired maid stood at the door with a tray of food.

Peter removed his hand from Stiles’s breeches.

“Yes, Petunia,” Stiles said, and from this close, Peter could see the flush creeping from his cheek to his ear.

“Terribly sorry, my lord –” she began at once.

“If you’ll just –”

She carried the tray in, averting her eyes. “Did not think –”

“On the table is fine, yes.”

“– just be leaving then –”

“Yes, thank you, Petunia.”

“– thousand pardons –”

Stiles stared at the ceiling. “It’s fine, really.”

The door closed.

Peter broke into a fit of laughter.

* * *

  
  


“I was right before,” Peter remarked as they ate, “about you wearing noble fashion.”

Stiles poked one long, hose-clad leg out from under the table and looked at it. The hose were patterned in diamonds of red and white, a new style brought over from the mountains where they used minerals to create a more enduring dye. The pattern continued all the way up to the scandalously high hem of his red doublet. Any higher and he would need a codpiece.

“I do have lovely legs, don’t I?” Stiles remarked with a wink.

“I could lay you across the table and give them proper appreciation,” Peter offered.

Grinning, Stiles bit into his leg of duck. “Eat your food,” he admonished.

As they finished, he caught Stiles’s gaze drifting, first to the door of the chambers, then to the western window, where the sunlight had begun to slant at a deeper angle. They had both washed and changed into court attire, anticipating that Lord Noak would call upon them. No call had come.

Stiles sighed and got to his feet. “This is absurd.” He began to pace. “Does he really mean to ignore us all day?”

“It must be difficult for him,” Peter reminded him. “It took you weeks to realize I was not your enemy, and you have sprung the claim on him in a single day.”

“Does he not even want to hear my defense?” Stiles protested. “Does he not trust my judgment?”

Peter moved to the chess table. “Come, let me distract you a while.”

“You would distract me at chess and not at the bed?” Stiles asked with a curious smile.

“Your body is not what needs distracting.” Peter moved forward his pawn.

True to his word, Stiles did trounce him at chess, though Peter felt he now had a better idea of his strategy. Next time, he would be prepared. However, before he could suggest a second match, Stiles stood and turned to the door. “I’m going to talk to him,” he decided.

Not knowing Lord Noak’s temperament, Peter could not offer support or dissent of the decision, only asked, “Do you want me to come with?”

“No,” Stiles sighed. “No, I will have to face him alone.”

* * *

  
  


By the time Stiles returned, Peter had dug into his books. _Floris and Blancheflour_ was among the collection, which they had read together many times at Eastfall. A few were in an eastern language that Peter did not understand.

“He is impossible,” Stiles declared as he came through the door. He shut it and, seeing that their plates had already been cleared, locked it.

Peter felt a clutch of anxiety in his throat. He did not enjoy the thought of riding to meet Sirs Parrish and Jackson with no army at his own back. They would surely report to Queen Lydia that his own lords did not see him as legitimate. “He would not hear you?” he asked.

Stiles crossed to his bed and sat on the edge of it with a sigh. “I have an _audience_ with him and his councilmen tomorrow. His own son! He won’t hear from _you_ at all.”

“You’ll do fine,” Peter insisted, though he was not sure if he believed it. He set aside the book in his hand and approached the bed. “You know your father, and you know our cause. You already pleaded before a queen for me.”

“I did, didn’t I?” Stiles smiled up at him.

“Quite boldly.”

Fingers caught in Peter’s belt, pulling him in until Stiles’s nose pressed against his belly. He stayed there, quiet, for long moments while Peter petted his hair.

At last, Stiles looked up at him. “Whether or not we get our army,” he said, “we will soon leave this place to go to war.”

Peter’s thumb traced his cheek. “Are you afraid?”

Stiles turned and caught the thumb between his lips, then released it. “I was too young to fight in the war until it was nearly over,” he explained, “and we only sent as many men as your father demanded. I fought a few skirmishes at the southern border. I have fought off bandits, here and there. I have never truly fought in a battle.”

Bending forward, Peter kissed him. “Fearing battle is the first step to surviving it.” He had said those words to a hundred frightened young men, but never like this. Never to one he loved. “The second step is to stay by my side. I will protect you.”

Long fingers wrapped around the back of his neck, pulling him down for another kiss, this one longer, more open. “Make love to me,” Stiles breathed against his lips. His hands slid down, flipping open Peter’s belt with practiced ease.

Together they moved to the center of the bed while Peter worked at the lacings of Stiles’s doublet. “I will say, your servants’ clothing was easier to remove,” he remarked. He had to pull away from Stiles’s lips to put eyes upon his task.

“When you have your throne, I will lounge about your quarters nude and ready for ravishing,” Stiles declared as he spread his legs. The movement revealed his breeches below the doublet, tenting obscenely in the gap between his hose.

Peter palmed at the bulge. “I should like to have you in a doublet like this, I think, but with no breeches beneath. All would think you were respectably attired, but I alone would know that I could bend you over and have at you whenever I like.”

Stiles’s hands flew to finish off his laces upon Peter’s distraction, and soon was tugging the doublet overhead. He nudged Peter’s knee with his foot. “Get your clothes _off_ ,” he demanded. “I have not been able to look upon you properly in an age.”

They managed to rid themselves of their vestments before Stiles completely lost his patience – though certainly not before he felt the need to voice further complaints. Once they were pressed bare against one another, though, his words went soft, wafting gently on gasps and sighs: “Oh please, oh please. It’s been so long.”

Peter got up, after long moments losing himself to their embrace, to fetch oil from the cupboard. When he turned back to the bed, his throat went dry. Stiles was on all fours, legs spread and cock hanging heavy between them. The oil nearly slipped from his fingers, but he fumbled and caught it. Looking at Peter over his shoulder, Stiles grinned and laughed, shoulders shaking.

“You wanton,” he accused, and Stiles only arched his back in response, the pert curve of his bottom rising in invitation.

Despite the urgency he felt, Peter took his time working his fingers in. For one reason, it _had_ been some time since they were together in this way. For another, he found himself captivated by the familiarity of Stiles’s moans. Despite their reconciliation, it felt good – nay, it felt _important_ – to hear for himself that this, at least, had never been a lie. Stiles writhed and hummed and pushed back in greedy rolls of his hips, just as he had their first night together.

It took a while, but he got him up to four fingers. Peter pressed his mouth to the small of Stiles’s back just as he gave his fingers a firm twist. This close, he swore he could taste the cry of pleasure as it traveled down his lover’s spine in delicate twitches of muscle, rushing to meet his lips.

“Please,” Stiles was begging, nearly sobbing. He had a hand squeezed around the base of his own cock. “Please, please, I need you now. I’ll lose my mind if you make me wait another second.”

Peter wondered if he had been begging long in such a manner. He had been so fixated on the tone and rhythm of his voice, the words themselves had passed by unobserved. “Of course, my love,” he agreed, moving up behind him. “I’ve got you. I’ll give you what you need.”

Stiles fell forward onto his elbows as Peter pressed into him, and as he turned his head, Peter saw the sheet clenched between his bared teeth. He started slow, rocking into the delicious heat of him and tracking each resulting twitch of Stiles’s fingers against the bed. Curling forward, he dragged his mouth over the arch of shoulder blades, set his teeth to the thick of muscle between shoulder and neck as it strained and arched. He nuzzled at the corner of Stiles’s jaw and breathed, “I love you. My god, I love you. You’re so sweet for me.” His hips snapped forward more firmly.

A rough cry was his reward, the low rasp of it echoing off the wood paneling of the walls. Peter hoped they were not too close to other living quarters, as surely these walls were not as defensive as the stone of a castle. If the maid that walked in on them before had not yet begun gossiping to the rest of the staff, surely the word would come out now. “Yes!” Stiles cried, back bowing then arching as he shoved back against him. “Peter, yes, you feel so – I can hardly bear it – you feel so right.”

Neither of them had the willpower to resist pleasure for long. Peter wrapped a hand loosely around Stiles’s throat, using the grip to pull him back until he sat in Peter’s lap, knees spread wide. He did not let go but did not squeeze either and wrapped his other hand around Stiles’s cock. “Ride me, love,” he said against Stiles’s ear. “I want you to take your pleasure from me.”

Stiles did. He lifted his hips in sharp, greedy thrusts, shifting at first to find the perfect angle, then moaning obscenely when he landed it. His hands splayed flat on his own thighs for balance as he rocked restlessly between Peter’s cock inside of him and his fist around him.

Peter felt half drunk on the sensations: The endless chanting of moans and senseless praises. The sight of Stiles’s mouth agape, head tipped back in wanton ecstasy. The smell of sweat, the feel of it slipping between his chest and Stiles’s back, the taste of it when he set his mouth to Stiles’s shoulder. He could feel Stiles getting closer, but could not hold himself back any longer. His pleasure crested suddenly and relentlessly, prolonged by the clench of heat around him.

A hand closed over his own, and Peter realized that his grip had gone lax in stupor. Soon, though, Stiles was using it to stroke himself roughly, his hips still moving in ways that left Peter gasping and oversensitive. When Stiles finally spilled over their hands, Peter groaned with him, in relief.

They settled onto the bed, Stiles sprawled on his back and Peter on his side, facing him. “If that’s my last fuck before I die in battle, I will be satisfied,” Stiles declared.

Peter caught one of his hands and drew it in to kiss its knuckles. “Stiles, the sun is not yet set,” he told him, “and your audience with your father is not until tomorrow.” He leaned over him with a wicked grin. “I assure you, that is not your last fuck before anything.”

* * *

  
  


A servant came in the morning to summon Stiles to the great hall for his audience. He had dressed sternly in a white, sleeveless cotehardie, thickly structured so that it made his shoulders appear larger, his chest broader. The sleeves of his tunic were the vibrant yellow of The Beacon, his hose as well. Put together, the colors made him appear grown, but virtuous. A man of dignity.

Peter, for his part, had put on a fitted robe of black silk which fell to his ankles. It was not his preferred style, but he needed to look kingly, after all. Though he would not be in the room for the audience, they had decided he should wait outside, at the ready if he were to be summoned.

Stiles went inside, and the doors shut between them.

Peter sat on a bench in front of a tall window, open to the courtyard where the skies had shaded themselves in white-gray clouds. Two servant children, a boy and a girl, played in the garden, ducking behind trees and statues as they chased one another. He would never father his own children – he had already decided as much. Aside from his sexual peculiarities, he did not think he could stomach the fear of becoming like his own father. Peter knew he had a better moral character, but he still did not see himself as a warm man. He had enjoyed Talia’s children’s energy, however, and thought he would enjoy it if his nieces and nephew brought still more youngsters through the halls of Triskelion.

The audience went on a long time. He tried not to imagine it, though he did on a few occasions hear raised voices bellowing indistinctly through the doors.

This would not go their way.

Perhaps they could ride to Lahey, less than a day’s journey around Nematon Lake. Isaac had said many on his own council still felt loyalty to the late Lord Lahey. Perhaps he could make the same entreaties there that the others had made: that he was less like his namesake than his usurper. Perhaps they would grant a few men, at least.

The doors opened, and Peter stood. The councilmen, most older and round in the gut, filed from the room. A few bowed their heads to Peter as they went past, saying, “Your majesty.”

“Has a decision been made?” he asked, stretching his neck to try to look past them for Stiles.

“No, your majesty,” said one, a wizened man with little hair. “Lord Noak has sent us out that he might converse privately with his son.”

The doors closed again. The councilmen went on their way. Peter sat. He waited.

From his seat, he watched as a drop of rain fell on the petal of an iris, then another. The flowers began dipping and twitching as the fat droplets struck them. The children stopped their chasing and both looked to the sky, mouths open. The rain fell heavier then, and an old woman rushed out. She seized each child by the ear and dragged them inside.

The doors opened.

Stiles stood in the doorway. He offered a weary smile. “He wants to speak with you.”

Lord Noak stood when Peter entered – a hopeful sign, for at least he saw Peter as his superior. He wore court clothes: floor-length robes of dark yellow trimmed in gray, a long silver chain around his neck and a feathered hat. Finery, Peter realized. He was looking to impress his status upon a king.

The hall itself did not offer much in space. It could host a party of perhaps one hundred without oppressive crowding. Curtains had been drawn on the courtyard side of the room, but those on the east hung wide to reveal tall windows of beveled glass. A wide table dominated one end of the room – the council table. Stiles, or any other petitioner would stand before it in the center of the room to plead his case.

Lord Noak stepped away from the table, walking instead to a pair of cushioned armchairs beside a window. “Your highness,” he greeted stiffly. He gestured toward the chairs. “Let us make ourselves comfortable.”

Peter sat without comment, wary of this show at familiarity. What purpose did the theater serve in telling him whether or not he would have his army?

No sooner had the lord settled upon his chair than he said, “My son says he is in love with you.”

After their boisterous lovemaking the day before, word would surely have made its way through the manor staff and, yes, to their master. That Lord Noak knew did not surprise him. That he would bring the topic to light so bluntly did.

“He tells me the same,” Peter agreed, cautious.

“He seems to think you return the sentiment.” Lord Noak had a cunning look about him, like he could determine a man’s probity or wickedness from the set of his jaw or twitch of his nose.

Peter had to fight to keep his chin level, his eyes fixed on the other man’s. “I do,” he replied.

Lord Noak stared at him and nodded once. “Love is a fine thing,” he said. He leaned back and folded his hands in his lap. “However, love alone cannot sustain a man. Love does not grant titles, does not provide security. Love is a feeling, not a promise.”

Though he could feel the heft of this topic, Peter could not help but agonize over not knowing if he had an army or not. He pressed his hands flat on top of his thighs to keep them from fidgeting. “If you are asking me to make a promise of devotion –” he began.

“Your highness, I am asking what your intentions are for this affair,” Lord Noak interrupted. “Is this a brief dalliance? Will you send my son back to me with our army when your campaign is finished?”

“No,” Peter answered at once. “I have asked Stiles and we intend for him to stay at Triskelion with me after the battle is won.”

“Stay with you for what?” he pressed. “To be your ill-kept secret? A joke for ladies at court to titter over when they think no one is listening? Lord Bedwarmer?”

Peter opened his mouth to answer, but no answer came. He closed it. “I had not thought about it,” he confessed. He frowned and looked down at his hands. “It is not looked upon severely for members of the royal family to take lovers, even for a man to take another man as a lover. That I hold such preferences is well known. But I suppose… I suppose I hadn’t thought how differently the arrangement might reflect upon the lover.”

“Not well.”

“No,” Peter agreed. His heart ached at the prospect of not being able to keep Stiles close to him, of having to let him go in order to preserve his dignity. There had to be a way around it. “What if...” he mused, speaking slowly as the thoughts came together. “What if I made him a title? Something new. King Consort. We cannot wed, of course, and I shall not take a queen. I could make him a title of equal standing, so none could question his value in Triskelion.”

Lord Noak did not reply for agonizing minutes, then slowly repeated, “King Consort.”

“Would that be acceptable to you as his father?”

Stiles’s father stood and folded his hands behind his back. “I shall want an invitation when the title is bestowed,” he declared. Then, conceding his status, added, “Your majesty.”

Relieved, Peter rose and mimicked his posture. “Of course. You will be welcome in our castle always.”

“Keep him close in this coming battle, King Peter,” Lord Noak requested. “I have heard great things about your abilities on the battlefield. I trust you to bring my son through unharmed.”

* * *

  
  


He and Stiles departed four days later with four hundred men at their backs. It wasn’t a large army compared to the fifteen hundred they expected from St. Martin. Argentus, if the new Lord Argent could be persuaded, could send a force as large as three thousand, given adequate time for preparation. However, The Beacon’s men were well-seasoned from living so near the borderlands and they knew the hilly terrain.

Riding on their own, a journey to the northern hills would take little more than a day. With the weight of an army, they would be lucky to make it in four. They reached the Martin River in the evening of the first day, but with precious few hours of sunlight left, they could not begin to cross without risking dividing their forces overnight.

“I think I might make the journey faster crawling on my belly,” Stiles complained. They watched as camp came together, tents rising and fires springing to light here and there in the chaos.

“It is always this way with larger forces,” Peter replied. “Be thankful we are not stuck back with the forces of St. Martin. They will have been at their crawl across the country for days now.”

He felt Stiles shift closer, their shoulders pressed together. “Do you think it’ll be enough?” he asked.

“Nineteen hundred?” Peter replied. “No. I confess, I was hoping for more from The Beacon, but your father gave us all the men he could. If Lady Erica is able to bring us another five hundred, that may be… well, it would be dire, but possible.”

“We need Argentus,” Stiles concluded.

“Yes.”

Stiles’s hand slipped into Peter’s and squeezed.

One of the servants, plump with youth, approached and bowed his head. He could not have been older than eleven. “Your majesty, Lord Stiles. Your camp is prepared and supper ready, if you’ll follow me.”

Their tent was no larger than the rest, at his own instruction. He had seen some nobles who erected tents the size of small houses at camp. In theory, it was a sign of rank and superiority. In practice, it served only as a target for bandits and raiding parties that struck in the night. They settled in the grass between the tent and the fire while the servant boy brought their plates. Rabbit, potato, and pease.

“Stiles, did I ever tell you how Deaton discovered your identity?” he asked, smiling at his plate.

Stiles already had half a leg of rabbit in his mouth. He shook his head and made a noise of dissent around it.

“Boy,” Peter called to the servant before he could leave. He lifted a piece of pease from the plate. “What would you call this?”

The boy looked nervous, like this was a test he might fail. “Er… a pea, your majesty?”

Peter looked at Stiles with a grin. “A pea. Common folk say ‘a pea.’”

Stiles shook his head in wonderment, then turned to the servant. “Are you from the outer villages?” he asked.

“Yes, my lord.” His hands fidgeted at the sleeves of his tunic. “Our village is on the shores of the lake, not far from here.”

“What’s your name?” Stiles pressed.

“Um.” The boy spared a timid glance between them before answering, “Peter, my lord.”

Peter arched a brow in surprise. He nudged Stiles with his elbow. “And you said commonfolk didn’t name their children after my father.”

“I’m not,” the boy said, then looked startled at realizing he may have spoken out of turn. “Beg pardon, your – your majesty. I am named for you, though, not your father.”

“After me?” Peter asked in surprise. He could have been no more than twenty when this child was born. He may have gone to war by then but would not have won any major battles. “Why?”

“The flood,” he replied. “When the Martin River flooded the valleys around Lake Nematon, our village was all but destroyed. They say it was you and your guardsmen who rode in and pulled the people from the floodwaters. My mother nearly drowned while I was yet unborn, but you rescued her.”

Peter didn’t know how to respond. Eventually, he simply said, “You should get yourself some dinner, Peter, before it’s gone.”

The boy bowed and took his leave.

“You’re blushing, your majesty,” Stiles teased.

“Shut it.” Peter tried to fight a smile and dug into his meal. “You know, it’s funny: all of the battles I’ve fought, the lands I’ve conquered or liberated, the warriors I’ve slain… that flood seemed like such a simple chore at the time. There was no great danger. I haven’t even thought of it in years.”

“There was great need,” Stiles observed, “and you gave aid.”

* * *

  
  


A rider approached from the north on the third morning, just before they began the westward leg of their march. They had crested a hill when he was spotted from afar, nothing but a flowing gray cape in the distance.

“It could be Argentus,” Stiles murmured, as if speaking the thought too loudly would curse their chances.

“It could be the rider is not even for us,” Peter replied, but he kept his eye on the figure as it thundered down the valleys at a gallop.

The rider reached them just before they stopped to make camp, and Peter sent men to meet him. They rode into camp escorting him on either side: Lord Scott.

Stiles gave a cry of joy and practically flung his horse’s reins at Peter before dismounting and sprinting across the field. Scott dismounted in time to meet him in a tight embrace.

Peter called for a squire to take their horses. He walked more sedately to greet their messenger. In part, he wanted to give Stiles and Scott space to reunite. Mostly, he dreaded what news Scott might carry if he rode here alone in such a manner.

He fumbled at a formality, though he yearned to interrogate. “Was your ride undisturbed?” he asked. “Do you need food? Water?”

“Negotiations went well,” Scott replied, a twist of humor in his cheek. Clearly, he could see right through to Peter’s real questions. “There were some concessions as to the autonomy of Argentus, but they have agreed to send at least two thousand men, including canons and a legion of archers.”

It felt as though a fist had been squeezing tight around his heart, without his notice, and that suddenly it had released its grip. He let out a breath, shoulders sagging. “When will they arrive?”

The smile died from Scott’s face. He looked down. “Well, that’s… that’s another matter.” He cringed as he explained, “They left Argentus three days ago.”

The looseness he had felt upon his relief took on a dizzy, unpleasant new intensity.

“Three days!” he heard Stiles say beside him. “They won’t arrive until Tuesday, Scott. The wedding is Monday morning!”

“It was the soonest they could leave,” Scott lamented, but his voice sounded far off. “Deaton and I only arrived in Argentus six days ago, and between negotiations and preparations...”

Peter seized on a string of stability. “Deaton,” he cut in urgently. “Where is Deaton? Why is he not here?”

Scott looked upon him cautiously, and Peter knew he must have looked more frantic than he wanted to. “He is riding with the army,” Scott told him. “I am a faster rider than he, so he sent me on my own.”

Stiles’s hand wrapped around his wrist, holding steady. “That is good, Peter,” he insisted. “Deaton will ensure the army comes quickly and from the correct approach.”

“Yes,” Peter murmured, though the words rotted upon his tongue. He needed Deaton, needed someone to council him upon how to besiege a castle with nearly half his army two days late. They could not wait. Laura could not wait. At best, Argentus would be a reinforcement. “Yes, it’s good.”

* * *

  
  


They came upon the armies of St. Martin and the Red Fens on the fourth day, in the valleys of the north. Peter had a knack for counting ranks, even in dispersed camps such as this one. Less than two thousand, to be sure. Either the Red Fens or St. Martin had failed to produce its full force.

Peter dismounted and bellowed, “Someone bring me Lady Erica!”

Not long after, he spotted her shock of blond hair rushing through camp. Boyd came close at her heels. Sirs Jackson and Parrish emerged as well, but kept their distance. Others in camp gathered around to see the commotion.

Lady Erica gave a full bow, more respectful than she had been to him in quite some time. It was she, then, who had failed in ranks. “My king,” she said, “I regret to inform you that the Red Fens granted only half its ranks. My father feared retaliation might come from the borderlands while our forces were still away.”

“She pleaded your cause quite eloquently,” Boyd added, “if I might say, your highness.”

Peter frowned and nodded, considering. Half ranks from the Fens might explain the size of the company, but he suspected further deficiencies. “Sirs Jackson and Parrish!” he called. “What of your numbers?”

Parrish stepped forward and bowed. “Your majesty, my company is lacking by two hundred, who could not be recalled from their ships in time.”

He kept his expression stony, steady, though he felt dread curdling in his stomach. Nineteen hundred fifty men to besiege Triskelion castle. He could hardly breathe. “Lady Erica,” he said stiffly, “step forward and kneel.”

“Your highness?” she asked, frowning.

He huffed and snapped, “Take a knee, you impertinent creature!”

Erica stumbled forward at once and dropped to a knee. If the occasion weren’t so somber, Peter might have laughed at her panic.

He stepped in front of her and drew his sword. “This small party may get us all killed,” he told her, “but you will die a knight.”

She stared up at him with a look of ecstasy he could hardly fathom.

He spoke through the vows one by one, asking if she would uphold them. On each, she answered,

“I do.”

Peter set the blade on one shoulder, then the other. “Arise, Sir Erica of the Red Fens.”

* * *

  
  


Triskelion castle sat before them, the hazy light of dawn painting its gray stone in shades of pink and gold. In the valley below, an army marched forward bearing ladders and battering rams. The mounted fighters and archers stayed back on the hills. Peter’s knights had been scattered among these ranks to direct their own divisions.

Sir Jackson’s rallying cries carried on the air from the hill to the west. Peter could not make out the words, but by the timber and intensity, he knew the message all the same: to battle, to glory, to death.

Peter turned to the east and saw Stiles beside him, astride his horse. The sunrise cast a halo of light around him so that he seemed almost to glow. He tried his best to memorize every detail: every shaft of light, every hue, every subtle curve of his face.

Stiles stared curiously at him. “What’s that look for?”

“We may die today,” Peter replied.

A hand stretched across the distance between their horses, and Peter caught it with his own.

“We may not,” said Stiles, his lips curved into a daring smile. “Which possibility, I wonder, do you fear more?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is now an epilogue to this story! Go ahead and click the button to read the next story in this series if you want to see how things shake out.

**Author's Note:**

> I love it when people comment along, so please don't feel shy! Also, come visit me on [tumblr](https://luulapants.tumblr.com/) to read teasers and WIP snippets as I write.


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